


Poison

by FayeC



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, F/M, Love, M/M, Manipulation, Poison, Politics, Power Play, Revenge, Seduction, Sex, Werewolf, vampire
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:54:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 48,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21687895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FayeC/pseuds/FayeC
Summary: Poisoned by the blood of a powerful vampire whose kind she lives to hunt to avenge her family's murder, Veronica Wolf is forced to work for him for an antidote. Having learned that by drinking his blood, a one-sided bond is formed between them which allows her to manipulate him with her emotions, she sets herself on a course to lure him into finding her family's murderers by trying to seduce him.Meanwhile, Remus Valentin, Gate Keeper of the vampire realm running for the leading political position in his own world must stay on top of the game and never allows himself to be manipulated by Veronica or he stands to lose everything he's worked for. He must deal with this unexpected bond he has with her and try to keep his distance but finds himself being drawn closer and closer by her attempts to seduce him.This is a story of revenge, betrayal, manipulation and seduction, of bad boy and bad girl going at each other's throat in a deadly game where the risks are high and the love and desire will drive a stake through your heart.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	1. A Lack of Heart

\- VERONICA -

There's a vampire in my attic. A lone male, pumped full of Wolfsbane and bleeding from a gash that runs from his right shoulder to just above his waist. On his thighs are several bullet holes that won't heal, not unless I give him something.

I'm not going to give him something.

There's an odd sense of satisfaction to that thought, to knowing that for once it's _my_ mercy to give or not give, _my_ choice to kill or not kill, _my_ turn to make them beg or make it quick. The world is a place for those with a lack of heart. It's one big prison with no way out, and you can be the one holding the club or the one beaten by it. The truth is, I've been beaten enough times to know the latter is no longer an option. Now it's my turn to be the one doing the beating, and I intend to go at it with everything I have. It's hurt or be hurt, kill or be killed. Deny it, and the whole world will crush you like a cockroach under their boots and never look back. That's how it works.

At least that's how I thought it did until I'm the one standing on the other side of the bars. If you think being the one holding the baton will solve all your problems, well, then let me tell you this much: _it's still one big fucking prison with no way out._ There's still no escape from pain, no healing for old scars. You can beat your enemy until your sweat runs dry, but you can't beat the past out of you. Believe me, I've tried.

Which is why I'm standing in front of the door, experiencing a small panic attack that paralyzes every nerve in my body as soon as I smell the blood coming through the gap from the other side. I hate that our blood smells the same, how, every time, it brings back memories of the massacre in that attic. The images of that night still thrive in my head like a bad song from childhood being stuck on repeat. I can still see everything just by standing in front of that door. The shape of my mother's arms curling around my brother's body. The awkward angle of my father's broken neck as he lay dying. Everything, down to the shape their pool of blood had made before those vampires stepped on it. They hid me in the wooden crate by the window because I was the only one small enough to fit. That was all there was to it, how I survived. I used to hate how small I was as a child. Now I hate it even more.

I close my eyes and swallow the bile in my throat, along with my dinner that is threatening to come back up. Four years of moving back into this house, of setting traps and hunting down vampires and I can still puke my guts like it was yesterday when my family had been killed in that attic over a single thought. Then again, I've chosen to come back and use this room for a reason. I'm here because it brings back every pain, every memory of what I've lost, of what they've _taken_ from me. They're the steel of my blade, the nerves that make me pull the trigger, the adrenaline that helps me make decisions normal people - good people - can't make and still be able to live with themselves.

I draw the one breath I need and punch in the codes, waiting for the mechanical lock to turn before pushing the door open. The now windowless room is flooded with light from the fifteen white UV lamps I've installed in it, and it takes me a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the brightness. It's how I keep my vampires weak and defenseless in the middle of the night when they're most dangerous. Despite the more common knowledge about vampires, they don't actually die or burn in the sun like books and movies make you believe. That would have made my life so much easier if it did. The fact is, they just don't like being in the sun because they're weakened by it and they can't see. Think of them as nocturnal animals that are so well equipped to hunt in the dark that they can't function during the day. At night though, they're as hard to catch as trying to shoot down a bat in flight, and also impossible to do so without bait. It's why I had to go clean up the blood from my body before I come back here. The smell of our blood drives them crazy to the point of being rabid at times, and I need their brains to function for what I intend to do. At least long enough to get what I want.

It was difficult to catch this one with just silver bullets, which was strange in itself, not to mention the fact that he'd approached me in an entirely different manner than the rest. Most of them had jumped on me like a feral animal as soon as they saw that I was alone, driven mad to a varying degree by the blood I usually smear all over myself to draw them in. This one just observed and followed me home quietly, and if I'd been more naive I might have thought that he'd wanted to talk. The male had walked right up to me on my front porch, holding both hands in the air as if to say he'd come in peace and simply wanted a word. It just so happens that I'm the kind of girl who shoots first, talk later, which resulted in me having to stab him with an injector full of Wolfsbane to get him to stop choking me to death some time afterward. Even then, it took three more bullets and a bunch of cuts from my dagger to weaken him enough for me to get him tied up and drag him over to the attic. I've never had to use both Wolfsbane and silver bullets to bring down a vampire, and I try not to. The herb makes them bleed all over the place when you shoot them because their blood won't clot and the wounds won't close as usual, and cleaning up blood was a chore I hate with a passion.

That's another strange thing about this one. His wounds aren't burning as badly as the others by the silver I've attacked him with - not before I'd stabbed him with the injector. For some reason, he seems immune to it, and without the Wolfsbane in his blood, I doubt that I can keep him tied up for long. Which reminds me, that I should go down to the kitchen to grab another injector from the fridge on my next visit, just in case it wears out.

In the center of the room is where left my male vampire, strung from the ceiling with silver chains around both wrists and secured to the floor with a pair of silver cuffs around his ankles. I step around the pool of blood that has advanced all the way to the center of the room during the time I was gone to clean myself up and eat my dinner. From the looks of it, he should be running out of blood soon. _Good_ , I think. He will be ready to talk and tell me things I need to know. Or at least beg for mercy if he knows nothing. I do, however, need to find out why he's not affected by the silver like the others, and if there are more like him out there. It's the first time in three years since a vampire had given me so many bruises and a broken lip as a souvenir, and I'm going to wake up with a bad cramp on my neck for that punch he'd slammed on the right side of my face. Fortunately, I did manage to pay him back a bit more than he's given me, but that doesn't mean I'd be so lucky every time a vampire like this comes along.

I stop a little to his left where the polyurethane floor is still clean and check on my weapons. The shotgun strapped to my back has been reloaded, so is the Glock on my thigh. They're filled with silver bullets, of course. That part of the tale is at least true with vampires, and it works even on this particular one after he's been well-drugged. I wonder if it adds to their arrogance that they're not just difficult but also expensive to kill.

"So," I say, "how does it feel to be hunted down by the rabbit for once?" I hope it stings real bad. I really do.

The ashen hair male snarls at me, his long, sharp fangs flashing white despite the blood on his lips. "I'm going kill you and kill you slow for this, woman, and then I'm going to-"

I shoot him twice in the leg with my Glock before he could finish that sentence, and he rewards me with a growl that sounds like music to my ears. I don't need to hear the rest of what he has to say. I know exactly what he wants to do with me. I've witnessed it when I was ten. "I'll come back when you're done living with that fantasy," I say, turning back to where I came from. I could have stayed and tortured him some more for the information I need - or even for the fun of it - but I've done this enough times to not waste my strength or my bullets on a vampire that's not ready to talk. "Make some noise when you're ready to answer my questions," I tell him before closing the door and heading back downstairs to the kitchen. I need a few drinks to pass the night and to stay awake. I always need a few drinks to pass any night, to be honest.

The kitchen light is on, just as I left it. For the past ten years, I've taken on a habit of leaving the lights on in every room at night. Call it paranoia or whatever mental problem you think you're qualified to label me with, but the last time I didn't light up my whole house like a fucking Christmas tree strung with more UV lights than you can buy at a hardware store, three vampires were in my house having a feast on my family. I can be suicidal on a hunt sometimes, but I don't intend to die being taken by surprise by one of these bloodsucking animals.

I pause at the bottom of the stairs to peek into the kitchen, my hand moves to check on my weapons again before I enter by habit. The room is empty, as it should be - as it has been for the past ten years. A part of me wants to sigh in relief, the other, more disturbing side of me is a bit disappointed. Maybe I'm just bored. Or maybe I just want to find an intruder or a vampire sitting there so I can keep myself busy trying to kill something or survive someone.

_So I wouldn't notice all the space that should be filled._

I close my eyes and release a breath I've been unconsciously holding, reaching absentmindedly for a bottle of wine in the refrigerator. There're only two left, which reminds me I have to go into town to get more. My mood turns sour at that thought. I hate going to town, but then I hate having to deal with the delivery boy even more.

And then I hear it, the sound of someone - something - moving behind me.

"I'd be delighted for a glass or two if you don't mind."

\-------


	2. The Salt of Your Blood

\- VERONICA -

I wheel at the sound with the Glock in my hand, my finger already on the trigger. _Too late,_ I swear inwardly as I'm being thrown against the fridge and pinned on it by an iron grip around my throat.

A grip that isn't human.

"Before you waste your bullets," says the man, the creature, his deep, baritone voice as unforgiving as the hand that winds around my neck, "be aware that I'm immune to silver and whatever you think you have in your pockets, and also that I _will_ break your neck before you even think about stabbing me with a shot of Wolfsbane. Nod, if you understand me."

I stare at the silhouette that looms over me, a frame so dark against the light it looks like someone has just cut a hole in the room with a pair of scissors. In the middle of that void, a pair of wolf-like eyes pin me in place, promising a quick death if only I make one wrong move. They glow, first in bluish gray, then brighten into a blood-curdling silver. Behind him, a pair of enormous translucent black wings stretches out on either side of his arms, showing a span of at least twice my height. They're bat wings, not those feathery ones you usually see in picture books and movies, and where his lips parted I can see two indescribably sharp fangs peeking out between them.

_Fuck._

I bite my lip and give him a nod.

He flashes me a smile that reveals two rows of perfect white teeth, fangs retracted. "Brilliant," he says mildly, probably for the purpose of lowering my guard down. It doesn't work, not one bit.

The hand around my throat loosens as he takes a step back, and now I notice the other, holding the wine bottle I must have dropped when I'd reached for my gun. He follows my gaze and grins at me - the kind of superior grin that tells me he knows exactly what I'm thinking. He's way too fast for me to attack if he'd caught that bottle. He knows it, and now he knows I know it too. "Have a seat, Miss Wolf," he says in a tone of someone used to issuing commands, "or would you prefer I call you Veronica?"

The fact that he knows my name sends a chill down my spine. It means I have been observed, followed, and perhaps even researched. For what and for how long, I'm about to find out.

I draw a breath and step out of his shadow, heading to the table to sit down as I watch him open the bottle of wine and carry two glasses with him towards me. His wings are gone, tucked away somewhere behind the expensive designer suit he wears. He drags out a chair and sits down with the grace and entitlement of someone used to occupying a throne, and I realize then, that I'm dealing with a vampire of rank, of _very_ high rank. This isn't the kind of ruthless creature I'm used to dealing with. They're never this composed around humans, nor do they ever possess any kind of wings. No, this one is something else, and as a precaution, I have to assume that everything he says about his power is true.

I exhale and will my heart to slow. It's not working, not to the extent I need it to. "What do you want?"

He twirls the glass with the efficiency of a wine connoisseur and sniffs at the drink before taking a sip - a ritual that he seems intent on stretching for as long as it pleases him to make me wait for the answer.

"What do I want?" He muses as he puts down the glass but keeps his hand on the stem, caressing it with his thumb and index finger. "Why don't we start with the fact that you are in possession of one of my men?"

I swallow at that, not that I find it surprising. In a way, I've always known one of these days one of them is going to track me down to save a fellow vampire I've caught. Still, it doesn't explain why he's allowing me to sit here drinking wine and having a conversation with him, especially when he has every advantage over me. "I see. What's stopping you from killing me now and getting him out?"

"Courtesy, Miss Wolf." He smiles and sips the wine. "Call it a gesture of goodwill, if you prefer. Although, I did try to send Lucien ahead to talk to you, apparently that didn't work out so well did it?"

So the one in my attic - Lucien - did come to talk. "He attacked me."

"You shot him first."

"I shoot at every vampire," I tell him with a shrug. "What makes him so special?"

He chuckles at my response, and I swear inwardly at the fact that he's so relaxed around me, like I'm carrying nothing but a toothpick when I have two blades in my boots and one strapped to my thigh, not to mention a shotgun on my back.

"Well, now that you have your leverage, I hope you'll be more willing to talk. We're here to make you an offer, one that will benefit us both if we can come to an agreement."

 _Talk about a deal with the Devil._ I consider myself a reasonable person, and I'm willing to listen to what he has to propose, but first things first. "What happens if we can't?" I happen to be the kind of girl who insists on hearing bad news at once. Not a habit that makes me happy, but definitely one that keeps me alive.

"Then there will be nothing to stop me from killing you and getting Lucien out." It was a statement, a chore to be carried out, a promise.

I nod, despite the fact that all I want to do is to grab a knife and stab him where he sits. I'll die for that, and I know it. "I'm listening."

He smiles a little in approval as if I'm a kid who's just decided to behave. "For the past four years, you've been hunting down my kind, looking for answers that will lead you to your family's murderer -"

" _Murderers_ ," I correct, cutting him short. There were three. Three that I have no idea whatsoever what they look like, save for a tattoo on one of them that I saw through the holes of that crate.

He pauses a little and waits for me, the same way an adult might wait for a child's tantrum to pass rather than engage. I could stab him twenty times for that arrogance alone, and the thought of ruining that wrinkle-free designer suit just to wipe that superior smirk off his face suddenly becomes my newest, wildest fantasy.

"Go on," I say irritatingly, noticing as I did how there isn't even a single lint on that suit. Either he's a neat freak or he has people to wait on him. I have a feeling it's both. It means he cares about details, and someone who cares about little details can be dangerous to deal with or to hide your thoughts from.

"I can help you get that information. Even kill them for you if you'd like," he says casually like he only needs to snap his fingers to get it done.

I snort at that. "You expect me to believe you'd kill your own kind for me?"

"And you don't, Miss Wolf, kill your own kind?" He gives me a smile, and I clamp my mouth shut at a statement I can't negate. "We are not the ones responsible for the majority of cold-blooded murder that happens around here, no matter how much you wish that were true. May I?" He reaches for the bottle, brings it to my empty glass and pauses.

I give him a nod, and he fills it carefully.

"How many vampires do you think there are, Miss Wolf?"

I shrug at the question. "Enough for me to make a profession out of killing them."

He smiles. "And if I tell you there are more than ten thousand where I come from?"

"Then you'd be lying." They would have been captured by now, experimented upon, exposed in the news. In the past four years of actively looking for them, I have come across no more than twenty, and I've killed twelve of those.

"The problem with humans is that you think we are monsters lurking in the shadows of _your_ world, preying on _your_ blood to survive, when the truth is you are a very small part of our lives, no matter how hard it is for you to imagine so."

"Ah, but that is what you do," it's my turn to sneer, "lurk in the shadows of our world and pray on our blood, or do you deny it?"

"Some of us do." He sips the last of his wine and fills his glass with more. No permission asked this time. "The human blood is a delicacy, a cure to our diseases and injuries. It's also a form of stimulant - a highly addictive one, not so different from cocaine in your world. And like cocaine, it's rare, expensive, and illegal to have in possession without a permit."

"Illegal to have what in possession without a permit?" There's something I don't like about the way that sounds. "Blood bags?"

He pauses for a moment as if to give me time. "Stock and living supplies."

 _Living supplies._ Suddenly I feel my dinner threatening to come back up. In my mind, things are becoming clearer and clearer. Those missing people that were never found dead or alive. The ones that were caught whose corpses never turned up.

"Human trafficking is a problem we are trying to deal with," he continues almost apologetically, "but the smugglers' network is too well hidden within your society which we can't infiltrate. The truth is, Miss Wolf, we're only the end consumers," he puts the glass back on the table and looks at me intently, not smiling now, "the supplier, I'm sorry to say, is your own kind."

If there has been a floor underneath my feet, I can't feel them now. My head is spinning with the information I want to reject, but the pieces of unsolved puzzles are coming together without me trying to arrange them. They snap into place like it's something I've known all along. "I've seen your kind kill and feed on the innocent," I say, my own denial tastes bitter in my mouth.

"Junkies, I believe that's what you call them," he explains with a slight frown. "A small number of them sneak out from time to time to feed. Usually addicts who've run out of money or options."

 _A small number_ , he says. My blood runs cold at the thought of how many vampires I've killed in the past four years. If what he says is true, if there are truly thousands and thousands of them, then what have I been doing all along? More importantly, where's the lair?

I don't think he would answer the question, but what do I have to lose? "Sneak out from where?"

"Let's just say we live in a different realm. A different dimension, some might call it," he tells me easily as if it isn't a secret he needs to keep, like I'm not a threat in any way he chooses to see it. "The human world is not where we belong. It's our playground. The underground pub some of us come to get high. Our worlds do not collide, they are connected by gateways that open every full moon. That's why you see more of us during those nights."

I stare at him in disbelief, hoping that he's waiting for the right moment to say it's all just a jest, a practical joke he's trying to pull. But he does no such thing, and it makes perfect sense. Those abducted children and women who were never found dead or alive from the same areas. The vampires who hide in the shadows and never attack. Why there are so many of them but never enough victims to convince the public they exist. They're not hiding in someone's basement or in the woods to feast on us. There is an entire realm of them I can do nothing about, an entire society of vampires, including my family's murderers, who can come and go as they please. I feel sick.

"I wish there were an easier way to break this to you," he says in a tone more business like than one filled with sympathy, "but you're not going to find your parents' murderers without my help, or from here."

I look down at my hand, how it's trembling without my knowledge, and quickly close them into fists under the table so he doesn't see it. For ten years I've lived with one, single goal I've sacrificed everything to reach - to find and kill the vampires who'd murdered my parents, and rid the world of every single one of their kind I can get my hands on. But all that doesn't matter now, does it? Not if there's an entire realm full of them somewhere I can't reach. "What do you want from me?" I hear myself ask, but I'm not feeling the words. My mind is blank, and I can't see anything but my parents' corpses on the floor of my attic. The whole thing is making me dizzy, or maybe it's just the wine.

"Your service, Miss Wolf," he says, uncrossing his legs as he leans forward. "You will work for me as my contact in the human world, to obtain information, infiltrate the syndicate, and help us bring down the network that smuggles your kind into my realm, killing a few vampires in between. It's a win-win situation for both of us. I want this to end as much as you do."

It does sound like a win-win situation, but I don't like agreeing to something that's too good to be true, especially when it's a vampire that is offering the opportunity. Something just doesn't feel right. "What's your stake in all this?" I ask. "Surely you're not doing this for the sake of humanity."

"I'm impressed." His eyes light up with the kind of interest and admiration that makes me shift in my seat like he's just discovered a new source of entertainment or a brand new delicacy that makes his mouth water. "Let's just say, that it benefits my position to be rid of them."

"Ah," I don't bother hiding my satisfaction to being right. There is an ulterior motive to all of this, perhaps more than one. "Business conflict?"

"Political."

My hunch is not wrong. A vampire of rank, of _very_ high rank. "Who are you?"

"My name is Remus Valentin. That is all you need to know," he says, "for safety purposes."

"I see." _For safety purposes._ "Yours or mine?" The win-win situation is starting to sound more like a suicide mission, as far as I'm concerned.

"For the both of us," he replies smoothly. "Someone may try to use you against me, and then I'll have to kill you."

"Of course," I say with an edge to my tone I don't care to hide. "I forgot how easy it is for you."

The smile he gives me then is, again, that of an adult to a child. "Do you find it difficult to kill one of us, Miss Wolf? Are we really that different?"

I bite my lip at the truth in those words. _We are not monsters_ , I want to say, but I know how childish and naive that is, how much worse we can be as a specie. Still, it doesn't mean I should trust him any more than any stranger on the street. "How do I know you'll hold your end of the deal?" He can easily use me and then never deliver or say just say he can't find them.

"You don't," he replies blatantly like it's the most obvious thing in the world.

I blink a few times at that. "So you expect me to slave for you and take your word for it?"

"I don't see you having much of a choice." He smiles, this time in the way that makes my skin crawl. "The wine you have been drinking is contaminated with my blood, which in small amount will act as a poison, killing you slowly within a month. In large amount, you will die instantly and you'll turn. The amount you have ingested is small and can be kept in check with a daily intake of antidote. The effects should be kicking in right about now. How do you feel, Miss Wolf?"

My mind goes suddenly blank at those words, and it takes me a few seconds to understand what he's saying. _How do I feel?_ I'm nauseas. My head hurts and I feel like I'm half way between being drunk and having a bad migraine. I have been blaming it on the wine and the anxiety of the whole situation, but this burning sensation underneath my skin is something I have no explanation for. Now I feel numb all over, not from the poison, but for realizing the trap I've just fallen into. I don't know which is rising faster, the fever I seem to be getting from the poison, or my anger that is about to go through the roof.

"You poisoned the wine when you opened it." It's a statement, not a question. _'Courtesy,'_ he said. There has never been an intention to negotiate me into this. Not from the very beginning. "You _unimaginable bastard._ "

"Your choice," he continues, ignoring my insult as though it was no more than a nuisance made by small insects, "is to work for us, or be content with dying young. If you choose to cooperate, you will be given the antidote. It will stop the poison from attacking your internal organs if you take it daily until my blood is gone from your system, which will take about a year."

 _One year_. I want to throw up, to scream, to claw his eyes out, to beat myself to a pulp for allowing this to happen. My whole body is trembling, my nails are digging into my palms as I sit there, trying to figure out how I've let it come to this.

"I wouldn't beat myself up too much if I were you," Remus says almost sympathetically. "You've managed to surprise Lucien, that's something. That reminds me." He looks up to the ceiling, cocks his head a little to one side as if trying to catch a sound.

And finds it.

I jump off my chair the same moment Lucien appears in front of me. My hand snatches the gun from my hip by reflex and points it in his direction. Lucien disappears in the same instance and something hard slams into the right side of my head. My vision blurs, and the next thing I know, I'm on the ground, the gun in my hand knocked out and landed a few feet away. I try to reach for it, and Remus steps in front of me, standing firmly between me and the weapon.

"Don't," Remus says, the lazy, baritone voice is now filled with unmistakable authority. "The two of you will be working closely together from now on, and I will not tolerate conflicts among my men. Consider it my first and last warning."

From the corner of my eyes, I see Lucien taking something from his pocket and handing it to Remus. "These are your antidotes," Remus says, placing a small glass vial containing a few dozens of pills on the table. "You will be contacted again and given a full briefing on what we need you to do. Until then you will lay low and rearrange all your other engagements that may interfere with the job. Do you understand?"

By then I can hardly get off the floor. My head is spinning out of control. My throat is burning like someone is pouring hot coal down my throat. I nod, despite the voice in my head that is screaming at me to fight, to kill him, to draw blood.

 _Not yet._ I snap back at it. _Not now._

"Take the pill, Miss Wolf, and try not to get yourself killed before we meet again."

And just like that, they disappear. I realize then that both of them can teleport, that I may have caught Lucien only because he's been ordered to keep me alive. Through my elaborate scheme to catch a vampire I've foolishly walked myself into a trap I can't get out of. Now I'm going to have to work for them or I won't get the rest of the antidote. Remus is too powerful for me to go up against, and possibly protected by an army of vampires who could kill me in a heartbeat. Under the circumstance, I might as well die today and save myself the misery.

The problem with that is, I've never been someone who can stand being knocked down without turning it into one hell of a fight. Nobody gets to push me to the ground and walk away with their lives intact. I may not be able to hurt them, and they may end up killing me, but if I'm going down I'll make damn sure they come down with me. O swear I'll die a death to remember. So I push myself off the floor and crawl to the antidote he's left on the table. I take out a pill and I wash it down my throat.

One day, before all this is over, I'm going to make him pay for what he's done.


	3. Bait

\- VERONICA -

The next seven days were among the worst of my life. I dream of the night my family was murdered sometimes, but those nightmares usually came once or twice a month, and when they did, a good dose of sleeping pills and antidepressants put me right back to sleep. Ever since my encounter with those two vampires, I began to have them every time I went to bed, and when I woke up no amount of pills would come close to putting me back to sleep again. In my dreams, the images are the same, only more vivid and in order. It's as if someone has taken up a broom and dusted my memories, rearranging them to perfection for easy access. The only difference is that Remus starts to appear in all of them. I would see him standing in the attic, his bat wings opened and spread out over the corpses, and in those dreams he comes for me, to drag me from where I was hiding. At that point, I'd wake up and run to the bathroom to puke my guts. You'd think it's bad enough that the poison in his blood is taking over my body, but, apparently, his existence is also taking over my mind, eating me alive slowly from the inside out. 

That morning I wake up the same way, and even though I've slept a few hours each night I feel like I haven't slept for a month. The moment I open my eyes, I run to the bathroom with the need to throw up whatever is left of my dinner, and nothing comes out but the acid in my stomach. I remember hearing new mothers talk about morning sickness which sounded pretty close to what I'm suffering. If this is what comes with having a baby, I swear I'll kill any man who even suggests that I have one.

It's pure torture, and I have been tortured, cut open, stabbed, and bruised enough to earn bragging rights about it in a room full of war heroes, but none of it even come close to what I've been suffering. All my senses are both heightened and dulled at the same time. I can feel every little thing that happens in my body, smell every scent I haven't noticed before on my clothes and furniture, but I can no longer taste certain things in my food. My eyes are so sensitive to light I wake up with a big bad migraine that contributes to my need to puke every morning. I have an aversion to some food now — mostly processed and frozen meals for some unknown reasons — and my craving for red meat is at its worst. The smell of soap and washing detergent makes me sick. In fact, everything makes me sick.

It's Remus' blood in my body that's causing all this. I figured out that much because the symptoms seem to lessen or disappear after I take another antidote, and they return with a vengeance when it begins to wear off. That knowledge coupled with my daily dose of agony drives me mad every time I enter the kitchen. As soon as I step into that room, the image of those bat wings flashes back in my mind, and I find myself wanting to stab something to death for at least the next hour.

Today is no different. I'm at the height of my rage halfway through my bowl of granola when I hear a knock on my front door. I look at the clock and it says six in the morning. No deliveries come that early, and I have no friends or family close enough to be calling me at this hour or they'd cease to be considered one. I take out my phone to check on the security camera I'd installed around the house. There're two people at my front door, one male, one female, both in their twenties from what I can make out of their faces and bodies. They seem to be unarmed from what I can see through the cameras. The woman has nothing in her hands, not even a handbag, but the man is carrying a small backpack on one shoulder. I've never seen them before in my life.

I rise from the table and grab the gun I've stashed in one of the drawers, picking out a small knife to slide into my jeans' back pocket on the way to the door. Making sure my door chain is secured, I move to stand by the wall before I open. It's how I usually greet all my visitors. I don't take chances, especially when I'm out here alone in the woods.

I study the two of them through the small gap I've opened, my gun already loaded and positioned where I need it to be.

"What do you want?" I ask, noting where their hands are and how they stand on their feet. These are professionals, trained to react quickly to threats and to kill quietly and efficiently. It's in their every gesture and the way they hold themselves. I check my weapons again, twice.

The woman gives me a knowing smile and glances down where my gun is positioned behind the wall. She keeps her hand where they are and holds her position at a distance that allows both of us enough space to not feel threatened by one another. "Lucien sent us," she says casually, "we're his contact here. You can put the gun down."

Lucien. That name infuriates me as much as his boss', but that short, right to the point introduction tells me everything I need to know to lower my weapon. The fact that they know him tells me they work for him, and since Remus obviously wants my cooperation enough to poison me to make sure I stay on his leash, then he would have instructed them that I'm not to be harmed. That, and now that I see them up close I can tell they're both vampires. Their veins tend to be more visible when they're out in the sun, and their pupils dilate twice as much with the slightest amount of light. They would have come to me during nighttime if they're here to hurt me.

I unlock the door chain and step aside to let them enter. The gun I still keep in my hand, just in case. The curly-haired, brown-skinned female comes in first, then the blond male, showing me the hierarchy between the two. She's wearing a black leather jacket with studs all over and a pair of blue jeans tight enough to leave nothing to the imagination, and by that I mean I can see the deep lines of her muscles, as well as how deadly those thighs can be if they ever wrap around your throat. The male is wearing a crisp black shirt with the top three buttons undone and a pair of slim-cut designer pants. His sleeves have been rolled up to his elbows, and his hair matches the latest male fashion I saw in the magazines. He's smiling at me, showing two rows of perfect white teeth, and eyes that sparkle like those of the male models you see in perfume ads. I turn to the female, and she holds her hand up for a shake. I hesitate.

"I'm Rae, and this is Chris," she gestures to her companion who makes no attempt whatsoever to conceal the fact that he's checking me out. Men, I resist the urge to sigh out loud. Do they ever think about anything besides utilizing their ability to breed? "We're your contact here and have been sent to brief you. I suggest you take my hand, girl, before I decide to throw whatever's left of my humanity out the window. I promise your life won't get any easier."

The tall, blond male next to her wince at those words and suddenly finds my doormat highly interesting. Apart from his Thor-like bulk and his angelic face, he gives me the impression of a normal, harmless guy, and I have to admit it puts me a little at ease. Rae, on the other hand, is going to be a joy to work with. I liked her the moment she opened her mouth. I don't trust sweet, soft-spoken females. They tend to be most heavy-handed when they stab you in the back. I suppose all that pent up energy from trying to be nice has to go somewhere.

"Veronica," I say, shaking her hand and then Chris.' "Call me Vera." It's not that I want to be on a nickname basis, but the thought of allowing everyone else to call me by my nickname except that arrogant bat pleases me.

I lead them to the kitchen, as that's where I conduct all my businesses with the rest of the human race, and now, apparently, with vampires. It's also where I hide the most weapons, and here there's enough room for me to move around and defend myself in case of an attack — not that it helped in any way the last time that had happened. I invite Rae and Chris to sit and pour them some coffee. Me, I stand against the counter where my knives are within reach. The gun, I place by my side at an arm's reach. All the while Rae keeps an eye on my movements in between her sips of the coffee, most likely trying to guess where all my weapons are. Chris, to my surprise, appears overly relaxed, as if he couldn't care less where I place my hands or my feet and seems to be more interested in the size of my bra or the shape of my backside. I don't mind men looking at my assets, as long as they realize what's mine stays mine.

"So," I say, eyeing them as I sip my coffee, "what exactly do you do?"

"You don't waste any time," Rae raises a brow and chuckles, "I like that."

"I don't chat with vampires," I tell her. "I kill them. No offense."

She smirks. "None taken."

Chris rolls his eyes at Rae and turns to beam at me with a smile that probably makes most girls' knees weak, unfortunately for him, my knees only ever become weak in the presence of a thick, juicy red piece of a dead cow, or a cheesecake.

"In short, Rae is the Head of Operation here." He leans forward with the cup in both his hands. I like that he doesn't appear arrogance or vain, despite his looks. Chris is just flirtatious and friendly, from what I can see so far. "So basically she gives orders and herds us around to get things done. Me," he winks, "I'm the guy you come to when you need something, and I know everything."

"More like the nerd we use to gain information," Rae cuts in, "but yes, he knows everything, and he's our welcome wagon."

Head of Operation and the welcome wagon. I can see why.

"How many of you are there?" The first thing I need to know is how big of an operation this is and what I'll be getting myself into.

"How many of us are working together?" Rae asks and thinks about it for a few seconds. "Our network consists of about a hundred or so vampires who're working to bring down the syndicate, but if you count the humans we work with, it's probably more than twice that number."

It's a pretty large organization, and I'm starting to have a bad feeling about what their needs for me are. "Then why do you need my help? You obviously have enough people working for you."

Chris sips his coffee and smiles wryly. "We do, but for the past two decades, we can only get information about transport and money changing hands. The raids we've done were on temporary holding facilities. To this day we have no idea where their headquarter is or who operates at the top level. The victims we've rescued were kept blindfolded and in the dark the entire time, and the mercenaries we've caught were simply guards who had no information about where the victims came from. They know what they're doing, and their chain of operation is kept strictly on a need to know basis."

It does sound like a highly professional and functional drug deal. I can see why they've made no real progress for decades. "And the kidnappers? Surely you can trace them back to their buyers and go from there?"

Rae shakes her head. "That's the problem," she says. "The kidnappers are humans. They're random crooks who work independently as opposed to one being on a regular payroll. The syndicate sends some middlemen to spread the job offer, and after someone has taken the job and delivered, they, too, go missing. In short, they don't use the same guy twice. So to get one of the kidnappers alive, we need to catch them in action, but since they do a background check on the victims before they move in, we have to rely on our human partners to do the job."

"And they're not doing the job." I can see where this is going.

"More like they can't," Chris replies and pauses, turning the cup of coffee in his hand as if searching for the right words. "They target single women and men with little to no families in their twenties or younger. It's already difficult to find people to work for us, and the ones we've managed to find have either ended up being captured, or we lose them the moment our tails get too close. We need the targets to be able to handle their captors. That's...where you come in."

"I see." I can't help but sneer at the irony of it. "You want me to be bait."

Rae gives me a grin. "You fit the description," she says and makes a point at looking around the room, "and from what I'm seeing, girl, I can't wait to see you kick some asses."

So, she does know where I keep my weapons. I make a note of that and remind myself to think twice before getting into a fight with this woman. "How do you make sure they'll target me?"

"That's my job." Chris smiles, dragging his gaze slowly from my head to my toe and back up again, probably imagining something inappropriate. "And I'm pretty good at it, don't worry."

I suppose they must have a way, and I'm glad it's not my job to worry about. "Then why not just let them take me and follow my trail to their main holding facility?" Interrogations take time, and I don't see the point of going around the bush, especially when I'm more or less at their disposal. I should be able to stay alive during a raid, or even break out of the holding facility when I need to, but even if I can't, I don't see why they'd care.

"My orders are to catch them in action and interrogate," Rae replies. "For now," she adds.

For now, of course. They probably need some time to see how much I can be trusted with the job, but I have a feeling there's also something she's not telling me, something I need to know about the syndicate. As of this moment, however, I have another, more pressing concern. "So what do I do if I need something? How do I contact Remus?"

Rae raises a brow. "You mean Lucien."

"I mean Remus."

Rae chuckles. "My orders come from Lucien," she says. "Lord Remus doesn't deal with these things personally. He operates on a whole different level from what we do around here. In fact, I'm surprised he even showed up here at all."

He did a lot more than showing up, I want to say, and I suppose if I hadn't stabbed Lucien with a Wolfsbane injector before he could recruit me, he wouldn't have bothered to grace me with his presence at all. It does present a problem, however. "So you're saying he's too high up the food chain to be called upon?"

Rae shakes her head and smiles in the way that tells me how ridiculous my question was. "Remus Valentin is the top of the food chain," she says. "You don't call on him. You file a request, which goes through about five offices before it gets to Lucien, whose job is to fix everything himself before he hands it over to the boss. If you're lucky enough to get an audience at all, the whole process usually takes a month or more. I get that he's hot as fuck, but you don't strike me as a girl who wants to sleep with a hot vampire. Why do need to call on him?"

That last sentence wasn't mild in any sense of the word, and I can feel the hostility in every syllable. His subordinates are loyal, down to the ones he rarely comes into contact with. I draw a breath and squeeze my eyes shut at the direness of my situation. This does present a pretty big problem. On one hand, I need to tell them about my concern, on the other, I'm not sure if I should reveal my weakness if they don't already know.

My silence must have alarmed them to a certain degree, because a few seconds later, I see Rae putting down her cup and stares at me, her dark eyes narrow sharply like she's readying herself for an attack. "I am waiting," she says, "for an explanation."

My hand inches toward the gun by reflex, but I make myself stop before it does. I have to think clearly before I act. The fact that I'm stuck in this situation anyway means that it's simply stupid to make even more enemies, especially out of these two that seem willing to play nice. Now that I know more about who Remus is and that all his underlings are loyal to a fault, I have to be careful what I say and do when it involves him. They need to trust me that I mean Remus no harm or they'll watch everything I do and every move I make. The first step to gaining their trust, I conclude, is to come clean about my situation.

"He poisoned me with his blood and gave me a month of antidote," I tell them. "In cases of emergency, I may need more." It's what I've been worried about. What if I lose the antidote? What if he forgets to send me more? What if his middleman decides to pay me back for what I've done to their fellow vampires? I can't trust Lucien. The only thing I'm certain about him is that he wants to kill me and then tear me to shreds for the sake of it. While I doubt he would defy his beloved master for that satisfaction, I'm not going to rely on the hope that he won't make it look like an accident when he's too fed up with me one day. I need direct contact with Remus if I am to stay alive long enough do this.

To my surprise, Rae blinks at me as if I've just pulled a unicorn out of my ass. "He gave you his blood?"

"More like tricking me into taking it," I reply. "Why?"

From across the room, Chris shifts a little in his seat and looks like he's just accidentally chewed on a bone. Rae, however, is staring at me in shock, eyes wide in utter disbelief.

"Why?" She repeats as if I've just asked the most ridiculous question in the world. "Remus Valentin is old blood. His line is pure and dates back to thousands of years. His blood is more potent, more powerful than that of ten vampires combined, if not more. You have no idea how many vampires would kill each other for a drop of it. How does it feel? Do you have any special powers? Are you growing wings?"

I feel like shit, I want to tell her, but considering how everyone seems to immortalize the hell out of this prick, I figure I shouldn't and I keep my mouth shut. According to Rae, I've won a lottery, a jackpot no less. According to me, I've won nothing but agony and a leash around my neck. It would have been nice if I have some special powers along with it, but as far as I can tell, I'm not about to start shooting webs or developing the ability to climb walls or anything similar anytime soon. In fact, the only thing that's developing pretty fast is the list of reasons why I want to see him dead, but I can't tell her that, can I?

So I tell Rae my symptoms, and as expected, she appears half disappointed, half relieved about the fact that his precious blood is of no benefit to me whatsoever. Jealousy can be deadly whether you're dealing with humans or vampires. I can just imagine how the majority of the latter would look at me if they know I've been fed Remus' blood, given that what Rae says is true. I swear that damn bat is making my life as difficult as possible on purpose.

"Well, that sucks," Rae chuckles and picks up her coffee again, "but you won't have to worry about the antidote. I can get a message to Lucien pretty quickly, and he has direct contact with Lord Remus. Did he drink your blood by any chance?"

"No," I reply. "Would that make a difference?"

She pauses a little, and I can see decisions being made in her head. The conclusion arrives quickly, as I expected. This is a woman who works fast, takes no amount of nonsense, dangerous, for lack of a better word.

"It would complete the bond," she explains, watching my every gesture as she does. "For vampires, feeding somebody our blood forms a one-sided bond. It connects that person to the giver or the one who turns you. I'm not sure if the amount you ingested was enough, but given how powerful his blood is, there's a chance you've already bonded to him in some ways, and if he drinks your blood too, then the bond is no longer one-sided. It's why we don't drink from those we intend to turn. We bleed them out, before giving them our blood."

Now, this has just become highly interesting, I resist the urge to grin at that thought in my head. I may actually have a way to pay him back for what he's done. After all, any kind of bond has its pros and cons, depending on how one chooses to use it. I happen to know exactly how I'm going to use it. I just need to know the details. "What happens when you're fully bonded?" I ask, sipping my coffee and trying to appear only half-interested.

Rae eyes me as she drinks hers, and I make myself meet her gaze. If I look away now, she'll know I'm trying to hide something.

"You feel each other's presence," she says, still watching my reaction like a hawk. "Strong emotions are sometimes sent through the bond, and other times you can feel their pain. Some pairs can even send mental messages through if they're bonded well enough. I think, and this is only a wild guess, that Lord Remus can probably tell when you're in trouble. He might also be able to track where you are, which might also be why he's given you his blood, now that I think about it."

"So I can be captured, and he can find the den." I nod in agreement. Of course, that's why. Feeding me his blood means I can't run or betray him for at least a year, and if he can track me, then I'm the most useful bait ever. If that's true, he probably won't let me die from the lack of antidotes, which takes care of my main concern. The good news, however, is that I can probably use that as leverage somewhere along the line.

"That bond still has to be tested, so for now, don't get yourself caught just yet," Rae adds.

"I get it. You don't want to waste your bait until you know for sure. One more question," I say, gesturing at Chris with my mug. "What just made your Golden Boy here suddenly stops leering at me?" Chris' altered reaction to my mention of Remus' blood is something I just can't let go. If I am to last in all this, I need to know exactly what my situation means among them.

Chris swallows and looks away. Rae just laughs out loud. "Girl, you might just be the only one immune to his charms. This just keeps getting better and better."

I want to roll my eyes and tell her I wouldn't fall for a vampire even if he looks like a cast member of the Avengers and acts like one, but I can also see why most girls might fall head over heels for him. Chris fits the image of that perfect, fun-loving, prom king girls want to jump into bed with if only for the sake of bragging rights, which is probably why he's useful for getting information and being a welcome wagon.

"The answer to your question," Rae continues smilingly, obviously still finding all this immensely amusing, "is that no matter how much our Golden Boy wants to pursue his goal of getting every female figure we ever work with on his bed, nobody in their right mind is ever going to touch what belongs to Remus Valentin, which you are now, in a way, having been given his blood."

"I see." So it's like he's pissed on me and now I'm his property. Great. While this could work for me as a vampire deterrent and some sort of protection, a part of me is dying to sink several knives into that assuming, arrogant bastard. The next time I see him, which might never come if Rae was telling the truth, I promise myself I'll make him suffer appropriately for marking his territory on the wrong human. For now, I'll play the role of an obedient girl who's good on her words. I'll play bait. It serves my purpose, and I need to lower his and his underling's guards. I need them to trust me.

"So," I say, bringing the carafe with me to fill up everyone's cup when I walk over to sit at the table, "what do you want me to do?"

\----


	4. Going Under

\- REMUS -

You fucking idiot. 

I swear at myself for the third time that evening. Inwardly, of course, not just because I have company, but because the wretched woman sleeping on my bed happens to be venomous enough to shame a goddamn viper. That, and a man in my position just can't really afford to show I've messed up on such a colossal scale without consequences.

The same wave of nausea hits me again, and this time I nearly double over. I know it isn't real, but it makes me want to puke my guts nonetheless. The attacks never last for long each time, but the fact that they hit so unexpectedly and usually during the night while I work is making my life difficult. The first two times had happened in the middle of an important meeting, in a room full of treacherous purebloods who can't wait for me to make a mistake they can use to strangle me with. For three days, I thought it was something I'd eaten until I realized there was absolutely nothing wrong with me, that they weren't really my symptoms. They were hers.

What the fuck was I thinking? I'd asked myself that question a hundred times that week, and so far I haven't been able to pinpoint which part of my brain could have malfunctioned so badly that it'd compelled me to do something as stupid as giving her my own blood. It was supposed to be Lucien who approach and poison her, and why he'd carried a vial of antidotes that were meant for his blood, which is obviously not potent enough to work with mine. How, in my three hundred years of life and the wisdom I've acquired, did I manage to allow the unexplainable, idiotic urge to take over and drop my own blood — my pure fucking blood — into that wine I still have no clue. The shit, I've now discovered, happens to be potent enough to agonize both of us, not just her.

I know about the bond, of course, know it just as well as any vampire. It just didn't occur to me that the purity of my blood would mean that every effect would multiply tenfolds. The one-sided bond that should have been simply an awareness or a small tug on the conscience for an average vampire happens to be a punch in the gut for me. I can feel what she feels — her anger, her pain, even her fear — and I feel it with the intensity and clarity that it's difficult to distinguish them from my own. I'm aware of her all the time like there's an itch on my back I can't reach that just won't go away, and the best part is that I know for a fact it's going to stay there for one whole bloody year. Fucking marvelous.

I squeeze my eyes shut and massage my temple. Surely there has to be a way to deal with this. I can ask Lucien who's sired probably hundreds of vampires, but my trusted seneschal is loyal to a fault, and his solution would simply be to get rid of Wolf. She's a risk Lucien wouldn't hesitate to eliminate, not to mention he'd get a kick out of it after what she's done to him in that attic. The woman gave him two broken ribs, three cuts, and five bullet holes that night, and because I'd ordered him to keep her alive, he'd let her do whatever she pleased. Now that he knows my blood runs in her veins, I bet she's moved all the way to the top of the leaderboard for people he wants to see dead. My fault entirely. I've managed to bond myself with a human girl, give myself a weakness, and piss off my most trusted subordinate in one night, all for a pair of pretty hazel eyes that piqued my interest. Some fucking talent, that.

I really should kill her. The bond is more than an annoyance, it's an opening for attack for a man in my position. Not that I haven't considered it when Lucien had offered to get rid of her, but I also remember the way she looked at me, the fire in those eyes, the fight in that small, fragile human body, and something in my sub conscience made me hesitate. I don't know what it is. All I know is that I don't want to, or the time hasn't come.

That, and I also need her to root out the syndicate. For two months I've had Veronica Wolf observed and researched, and there simply isn't anyone more perfect for the job. In fact, there hasn't been one for two decades. A human girl trained well enough to capture and kill vampires singlehandedly doesn't come by every century. Moreover, she has no friends or family, no social life, which means there's less chance of her going around telling everyone about it. She even has all the right motives to do what I need, and by gods, the woman can kick ass and looks good kicking ass. Marcus would have loved her. Marcus would have...

I stop myself at that thought, just before the familiar, searing pain fills my chest. Ten years, and some feelings just never go away, but then I'd known him so much longer than that, long enough for some wounds to never heal, and if I am to do what I've promised, I can't let Lucien kill her. Especially when we're so close, and the election is coming up.

That's when my headache doubles. Election is coming up in less than a year and I'm not half way through getting the votes I need. I look at the woman lying next to me and I can't help but release an uncharacteristic sigh. It's another annoyance I'm going to have to live with, and sometimes I wonder if it's worth it.

I rise from the bed and head to the bathroom, making sure I don't wake the Witch of Eastgate. There's a good reason they call her that, and I can't help but agree even though I do find Aelia a fun company sometimes. Right now, though, I need a shower and I need my solitude.

The shower does feel good. At the very least it numbs down what I'm feeling from the bond with the human girl. She must have taken the antidote right after that wave of nausea because now all I feel is her rage. It brings back the image of her in the kitchen, dressed in skin-tight leather and armed to the teeth with silver blades she had strapped to almost every inch of that firm, perfect body. Those high cheekbones and defiant, deep-set, hazel eyes make me wonder what she'd be like in bed. I can't remember the last time a woman looks at me that way. That girl wanted to cut me open and suck my blood dry if she could in that kitchen. If there's anything that can excite a man more than a hot woman who wants him dead, I haven't found it. Then again, it's probably that promise of excitement that had led me to do something as stupid as feeding her my blood. I can't help but scowl at that. I'm not going to win any election if I still l think with my cock.

"I hope that's not for me."

I turn to the sound and find Aelia stretching her back like a cat on the doorframe. She makes a point of wearing my silk robe and not tying the belt properly so that it hangs loose on her shoulders, revealing parts of her breast and a generous amount of her thighs. I congratulate myself on seeing the motive in that. At least I've been around long enough to know when a woman wants to seduce me and what she does on purpose to do so.

"Of course, not," I tell her as I turn off the water. "If it were I'd tell you." I usually would. Aelia and I are on a strictly business-only relationship, and we have no problem being brutally honest with each other. We do fuck occasionally, even though most of the time it had nothing to do with business. I figure if the Witch is to be my wife I might as well enjoy some parts of it, and she's not exactly a boring lay.

She takes two calculated steps into the bathroom and looks me up and down as I towel myself dry. I know she likes to watch me naked, and I don't really mind it.

"True." She smiles. "Was it work or a woman?"

"Woman," I reply, eyeing her to catch any inappropriate reaction. We sleep with whomever we want, that was a part of the deal. The problem is, so far she's only been sharing my bed, which does worry me a bit. I can deal with a bloodsucking, vindictive witch of a wife who marries me for power, but I can't deal with a jealous one who marries for love. Love is nothing but a degrading, self-destructive mess only fools look for, and I hope Aelia isn't one of them.

To my relief, she only raises a brow. "Who's the lucky girl?"

I smirk at that as I wrap the towel around my waist. "The lucky girl, Aelia, is none of your business." If she thinks I'm going to tell her stuff about my personal life, she'd better start striking a deal with another pureblood.

"Oh calm down, sweetheart," she says, swaying her hips as she walks towards me, pausing just an inch away. "I'm only trying to protect my investment."

"An investment I haven't agreed to, mind you," I told her. The dowry she'd proposed is outrageous, which is why we haven't entered into marriage even though I should make it happen as soon as possible to fully support the upcoming election. We're still in the middle of a bargain, and while I'm fully aware that she's a pureblood and the Keeper of the Eastgate, which entitles her to demand such a sum for the number of votes she's bringing me and for stepping down from being a candidate, I also figure if she becomes my wife and I make Chancellor, then she'll be getting a much better end of the deal. I, on the other hand, might be stuck with the Witch for the duration of my life, or at least for however long I manage to stay Chancellor.

"Ah, but you haven't said no either," she says, dragging her long, red fingernails along the nape of my neck and down my torso to the towel around my waist. "You know you're getting more than the votes, Remus. It is a fair bargain."

I roll my eyes at that. A fair bargain would be half the amount she's asking and with a different, more manageable beast. "Sweetheart, I have no problem getting more than the votes elsewhere."

"With the same expertise?" She smiles and licks her lips. "I don't think so."

I look down at the hand that dips between my legs and contemplate whether I should allow myself the entertainment or use this chance to show her how little I care about her expertise. As always, she flutters her eyelids at me and puckers her lips, as if to remind me how skilled they are. At the same time, her sharp nails travel up the inside of my right thigh, advertising what they can do, and I admit it's pretty tempting. Halfway through the debate in my head, Veronica sends another fit of that delicious rage through the bond just as Aelia wraps her fingers around me, and that, consequences be damned, throws my three hundred years of wisdom and self-control out the window.

"Very well," I tell her, running my hand through her golden hair and wrapping a bunch of it around my fist before giving it a forceful tug. She jolts and whimpers at the pain, and then purrs through her seductive smile. The Witch likes it when I get rough, and I have a tendency to be rough. In fact, that might just be the only thing compatible between Aelia Valaris and I. "Convince me."

She smiles and makes a move with her hand, and I tug harder on her hair, pulling her down with it. "On your knees, Valaris. I haven't got all night." I know I have some nerves treating a Keeper of the Gates like my little bed slave, but when I make Chancellor, which is the point of all this, I'm going to need her to be a tame little wife to secure that position. That and the price she's asking should come with such a privilege.

Aelia stiffens in my grip. Her blue eyes narrow dangerously now, giving me a warning. "Don't push your boundaries, Remus, or you might find me on the other side, and I promise you won't like it."

I know what's going to happen if I make an enemy out of Aelia Valaris. I know how many vampires she's stabbed in the back while sucking their cocks. The woman is notorious for her elaborate schemes, and have been known to switch sides as often as changing her hair style. Until now I haven't figured out the whole list of who she has wrapped around her fingers to utilize. It's a dangerous route I'm taking to win the election, but then again, I'm not exactly one without venom.

"If you're going to be the wife of a Chancellor," I pull her closer by the hair and brush those words against her cheek, "I suggest you learn how to kneel. And you should be thankful I'm offering you the opportunity, or you'll be staring at Kain's cock right about now to get what you want." I know why she'd come to me with the offer. Aelia is ambitious to a fault, and she wants this as much as I do, if not more. Her candidate is either me or my one competition, and the competition happens to be a boring, bearded male that enjoys torturing and beating up young girls in bed, not to mention he's ugly as hell. Compared to Kain Wilde I'm pretty much Adonis. She knows I know this, of course, but sometimes a reminder is needed to keep her in check. "Down, Aelia," I tell her, "I'm not a very patient man, I assure you."

She stares at me for a moment, considering her options, and then smiles venomously. "You have no idea what I'm willing to do to get what I want, Remus, remember that," she says as she lowers herself to the marble floor, kneeling at my feet. In the back of my mind, my human girl tugs not so gently on the bond, her white, hot rage sending me close to the edge and making me enjoy Aelis' mouth a little too much than I'm willing to show. I'm going to have to do something about that pretty soon before I make another piss-poor decision over my own prisoner and allowing it to become a weakness.


	5. My Trusted Seneschal

Aelis left my estate just after the sun went down to prepare for the High Council meeting at midnight, which would be about noon human time, and hopefully, the antidote my human girl usually takes in the morning her time would be in full effect by then. For the first time in my life, I'm utterly grateful that we work during the night and sleep at sunrise, which means I shouldn't be expecting to want to puke my guts in the middle of a room full of purebloods and Gate Keepers when her body tries to reject the poison. Perhaps I should ask Cecilea if she can up the dosage a bit and make the antidote last longer for the next batch so I won't have to feel like throwing up my first meal every damn evening.

I look up from the stack of reports I haven't read yesterday when I hear several footsteps approaching. The door to my office is always opened, simply because the enormous double doors my dear ancestors had installed take too much effort to open and slow things down when I need them fast. The estate is always heavily guarded in any case, and even if someone manages to get past security and through the four impeccably-trained vampires in the hallway, I don't usually mind a little exercise every now and then. The building is also protected by old magic, so no vampire can teleport in or out of it to surprise us except for the trusted inhabitants who wear the right ring. Out of about two hundred vampires working here, only four wear the ring: me, Lucien, my Head of Security, and my Master of Potion. Needless to say, walking from A to B is the norm here in the Westwood Estate.

So I've learned to recognize most of my inner circle's footsteps, and, as usual, they are right on time this morning. The entourage entered one by one in ascending order of rank. Cecilea, my Master of Potion, and Hester, Master of Weaponry, walk in first, followed by Lynx, my Head of Treasury, and then Kiara, Head of Security and Captain of the Westwood Tower. My personal guards, Mel and Dmitri, have been with me from the moment I entered, and now all of them had taken their place either left or right of my desk, leaving room in the center. They stand quietly, hands behind their backs, waiting for the day's report to commence. In other words, waiting for Lucien, my seneschal, who's also known unofficially as my second, my secretary, my chaperone, my righthand man, and whatever else the members of my staff choose to call him in the open or behind his back. How the man manages to fit everything into his day and still have time to fuss on what I eat or what I should wear to certain events escapes me, truly.

Without a second's delay, Lucien teleports into the meeting room at 9 pm sharp, and like a reflex, six deadly, high ranking vampires suddenly stiffen, well, seven, if I include myself in that bunch. Every time he walks in even I feel like I should try to behave. Sometimes I wonder who the Highlord of Westwood estate is.

"My Lord Remus," Lucien offers a slight bow and an official greeting, first to me and then to the rest of my inner circle. He makes a point at calling me 'Lord' at all times, which, in his opinion, is the only acceptable form of addressing a Keeper of the Gates in public, regardless of how casual I've allowed him to be with me in private or how many times I've told him to just call me by name. He wouldn't have it, of course. That's who Lucien is. Once he puts his foot down that this is how something should be done, no force in heaven or hell is going to move him at least for the next century

As usual, I sit and listen to the reports from my staff, each taking a turn, once again, in ascending order of rank because that's how Lucien considers it appropriate. He stops them for questioning from time to time, usually more often than I do, and then he closes the session with his own reports and offers me advice on how I should deal with things. I make the call, of course, but everyone in the room knows I'm just the pen that signs the signature on whatever my seneschal thinks is the best course of action. I don't really mind it. For one thing, Lucien is one hell of a manager. He's also a perfectionist who seems to notice every detail and nuance in a room filled with a hundred people. To prove my point, I've just noticed him scowling at the lint and a few strands of cat's hair on Cecilea's black jacket twice, and he's probably thinking about putting a mat outside my door for the dirt that Hester brought in with his boots right now.

For another, he's bonded with every staff in the room, so he knows how to keep them in check. Ever since I've given him the Westwood Estate to manage, Lucien makes a point of forcing everyone whose job requires coming within twenty paces of me drink his blood every year so he can keep them on a mental leash, and I think he'd sired a lot of vampires who operate directly under him. My seneschal trusts no one. It used to stir up some trouble among my old staff who've been working here long before him, but at one point I stepped in to back him up, and that was the end of the dispute. The rule of thumb is, you want to work in the Westwood Estate, you do what Lucien says, and if he doesn't trust you to do what he says, he kicks you out. As it happens, Lucien decides it's easier to just sire some of the staffs rather than spend precious time testing the loyalty of some random new guys. Which brings me to the conclusion that there's no one better to ask about how to deal with this annoying bond I've so idiotically created with the human girl than my workaholic seneschal. He's not exactly a pureblood, but at least he's a halfblood who's as old as I am, if not older, and the effects should be quite similar. The problem is, I'm not sure I want to ask him.

So I sit through the session, debating in my head whether I should pop the question as he reads me the list of appointments and meetings I have that day, crossing some off as he goes when he decides they're not worth attending. He does all this in front of me and after everyone — including my bodyguards — has been dismissed from the room. It's to keep the information of my whereabouts on that day from leaking out to too many people and to give me an opening to reject his opinion in case I happen to fancy certain events enough to make an appearance. So far, he's been rather brilliant in drawing the line between making decisions that work best for me and making it for me. I wonder, though, if he would ever cross that line when what I want clashes with what he thinks is best. Between his loyalty to me and his dedication to doing things to perfection, I have no idea which will triumph if that dilemma ever arises. I hope it never does. I really do.

"That will be all of your appointments for the day," he says, closing the folder in his hands. "What is the question you want to ask me?"

I swear inwardly at how easily he reads me. Lately, it's gotten to the point that I only have to look at a certain vegetable or woman for either to magically appear at my dining table. "Nothing." I decided I'd rather not ask.

"I can still get rid of her if it bothers you," he says expressionlessly as if I had asked the question after all. "The nausea does last at least a few weeks. For you, maybe a lot longer."

I should have known he'd notice, but I still wonder what I did that had given it away. "And how did you come by that information exactly, unless you've been slipping your blood into my food?" I ask, taking care not to make it sound too much like an accusation. There's always a line to be drawn with people who work for you. One can't be too soft or too quick to judge, or you end up losing good people either way.

"You've never not finished your figs when they're in season, my lord," he explains it as if reading from some kind of a lab report. "Since there was nothing wrong with the figs, I can only conclude that you've been feeling unwell and are experiencing a lack of appetite on a daily basis even though you have no fever or other symptoms. My first speculation is that you're either pregnant or you're suffering from the most common side effects of having fed somebody your blood. The first being unlikely, I must come to the conclusion that it's Veronica Wolf who's making you ill. By the way," he adds as-a-matter-of-factly, "you're a pureblood, my blood doesn't work on you."

I look at him with my mouth slightly opened, not sure which response I should give to that. I've somehow managed to forget that Lucien tastes my food for contamination, pays attention to my temperatures, and count every damn pea I leave on my plate for signs that something might be wrong with me, so while it feels somewhat creepy that he knows I've been feeling unwell, it's understandable. The pregnancy thing was an attack of sorts, which I haven't quite figured out if I should find it humoring or insulting. The fact that he says his blood doesn't work on me makes me want to question whether it has actually been tested, but I don't think I want to know the answer. In the end, I simply give up on making a comment. "How is she anyway?"

"Apart from the effects of being poisoned? She'll live," he says with an obvious hint of resentment. I know without having to hear it that he hates what I've done for several obvious reasons. "I sent two of my best to make sure she does what we want. They can also take her out at your command."

Two of his best would be Chris and Rae, which means he's observing her with extreme caution. "No," I give him a flat answer. "I want her alive and well. We need her."

"I can find others to infiltrate the syndicate. The bond is too much of a risk especially with the election coming up. They'll be using everything to bring you down, my lord. I must advise that you get rid of her before it becomes a problem."

"No," I repeat, firmer this time, which usually ends the conversation.

Not in this particular case, it doesn't. When Lucien presses his lips together that tightly like what he's doing now, he's about to come up with another argument.

"If you would like to bed her, my lord, I can arrange for it to happen quickly."

I look up and stare at him from my desk, the floor underneath my feet rumbles at the power my rising anger generates. Lucien's breath hitches when he feels it, and blood drains quickly from his face.

"If I want to bed a woman, Lucien," I tell him, wrapping an invisible fist around the core of my power to keep it under control, knowing the whole place would come down if I don't, "I am perfectly capable to do so without your aid or your approval. You touch Veronica Wolf, and I will consider it treason. Am I making myself clear?"

Lucien swallows and snaps his feet together before giving me a crisp bow. "Yes, my lord," he says almost too firmly, which tells me he still hates what I'm doing, even though he always obeys me in the end.

He left after that, and I release a heavy sigh. The problem with Lucien, is that he serves me with a dedication that rivals the most pious priest's to his most beloved god, and the protectiveness of an ambitious mother to her only son. While I'm blessed to have such a subordinate that I also consider a friend, I can see how such extremity can backfire. I know Lucien will take a stake to the heart for me without hesitation, but he will also go to lengths to eliminate anyone who poses a threat to my wellbeing whether or not I want him to. And this thing with Veronica is already showing signs of becoming a problem.

It's not so much that I want to protect her, but I needed to show him where the line is that he can't cross. No, I need Veronica alive, at least for now. It's a small risk to take to catch a bigger fish, and I do trust my instincts and discipline to get rid of her when the time comes. Besides, she entertains me, and I admit I'm looking a little forward to seeing that tight, shapely backside again. The stack of documents on my desk and the long list of meetings I have on my schedule, however, don't quite agree with me, and I figure it's bad form for me to tell Lucien I want to skip some of them for such small pleasures. For now, I suppose I'll have to make do with the little excitement I get from that bond which has, surprisingly, given me one hell of a laid earlier this evening. Oh, that was worth the nausea, even if it's going to last more than a few weeks.


	6. Strangers in the Dark

\- VERONICA -

I look at myself in the mirror, and I don't know who I am. My hair is in perfect, shiny curls like those girls' in a Victoria's Secret catalog. There's so much cosmetics on my face I feel like a 5-year-old's birthday cake with enough frostings to give a young adult diabetes. The red silk camisole I'm wearing is short enough to show my belly button without me having to lift my arms, and its V-shaped neckline plunges down past my breasts, exposing a daringly generous amount of cleavage that has been dusted with glittering bronzing powder to draw the eyes. The heels of my boots are four-inch high and pointy enough to rival my dagger as a weapon. They do, however, make my bare legs look wonderfully toned all the time, which makes wearing the skin-tight, leather shorts that come up to my groin a tad less embarrassing.

The whole thing makes me look like a prostitute, but that's the whole point of it, and Chris has made sure I can pass for one with flying colors. That's what they look for — a lonely girl with little to no family ties whose lifestyle makes it likely to be raped and left to die in the woods somewhere. It makes things less complicated. With no family to press them, the police don't investigate as much when they go missing, and the public is always quick to blame such a victim as someone who's asking for it rather than the rapist. As a result, these men and women tend to just vanish without consequences, and the syndicate gets off easy.

So to catch a kidnapper in action I have to play a role. For the past three weeks, I've been dressed in a similar fashion and sent to hang out at bars and clubs in town alone for them to start noticing my potential. Once that happens, according to Chris, they'd do a background check to make sure I truly fit the stereotype, and that I'm not some important person's daughter that will draw the public's attention if I go missing. Chris gives me a different identity and dresses me to look like a different person for each venue I visit so I can draw more than one kidnapper over a short period of time. In each one of those venues, Chris sends a rotation of guys he trusts to flirt with and eventually escorts me to some dark corners for a show, just to make sure I'm not bothered by some real-life scums while on the job. It's not that he thinks I can't deal with them, he'd explained, but that I shouldn't be caught kicking somebody's ass if I am to offer myself as a target, which makes sense, I suppose.

Well, the plan works rather brilliantly. In the past three weeks, I've been attacked twice by crooks who took the job offer from the syndicate. They followed me back to the cabin at the end of the night, and here I go to work on them. Both of the men talked quite readily, but all they could tell us was who their middleman was, and they were two different persons in each case. Rae decided to wait to collect more data before grabbing those middlemen for questioning, just to make sure we don't waste a good lead. Meanwhile, Chris works on finding out by whom they may have been contacted to spread the job offer.

The problem was what to do with the crooks we've captured after they talked. As it turns out, Chris and Rae are both turned vampires, and ironically they happen to have a bit more humanity than I do. They gave the first one some kind of injection that erases people's memories and plagues them with long-lasting hallucinations, then they dumped him near a hospital somewhere to be helped and rehabilitated. The second one, we found out from his blabbering, happened to be a serial rapist and a coldblooded murderer. I killed the son of a bitch before Rae could inject him with anything, but not before I did some good work on the prick. We had a bit of a disagreement on that issue, but I put my foot down and told them this is how it's going to be if they want me on the job. Some people don't deserve a second chance. Some animals don't deserve to live.

"You look good enough to eat."

I turn to see Chris leaning on the doorframe of my bathroom where I've left the door opened. As always, his blue eyes sparkle as they travel up and down my body, not in a sexual way — not anymore — but in the way a stylist might look at his great work. Ever since he knew I've been poisoned by Remus, Chris has stopped flirting with me completely. It's as if he's drawn a bold line and categorized me into a different species that can't be mixed with his kind. I have a feeling there's a lot more to it than the fact that Remus has marked me as his property, but I can't figure out just yet what it is. I should, however. Something that drives a playboy like Chris to draw such a line could be used as leverage. But how bold that line is really, I have to wonder.

"So, where do you want me to go whoring tonight?" I walk past him out the door and into the adjacent living room where I've laid out my weapons. I pick up my leather jacket and stuff a gun and a knife into the inside pockets, and one small, foldable blade into the outer one. Chris always sends someone to watch me from afar to make sure I'm safe, but I'm not in the habit of putting my life or safety in anyone's hand, certainly not in vampires and their associates.

"There's a bar called Red on the corner of Fifth and Collins Avenue," he says, scowling at my weapons, as usual. I think he's a bit hurt that I don't trust him or his men. "They have a full moon party tonight. The place should be packed. It's a good opportunity to show yourself."

Full moon. I've almost forgotten. It's been a month since I've been given the antidotes, and since he gave me thirty pills, technically I should have taken the last one this morning. The problem is, I've accidentally flushed one down the toilet a week ago while I was puking my guts out with the pill in my hand, and so I've actually been out since yesterday. Without it, the wretched nausea has returned and doesn't go away, and the migraine-like headache that has been bothering me since last night has increased in both frequency and intensity to the point that I feel I won't be able to hide it much longer. Since that first full moon, I've had no contact from Lucien or Remus, not even through Chris or Rae, and I'm beginning to worry that my worst fear would come true a lot sooner than I'd expected.

"Remus told me the portal that connects our world to his opens only on a full moon. Is that true?" I ask.

Chris nods. "Yes. Why?"

"I'm out of antidote," I say, not withholding my look of concern. If I don't get the refills tonight, that means I have to wait until the next full moon for someone to be able to bring it to me. Considering the knowledge that His Royal Highness Remus Valentin 'never comes here to deal with these things' as Rae has put it, I figure it would be rather easy for my little existence to slip his mind. Suddenly, I feel like garbage that has been left to rot when a homeowner goes on vacation, all because of that prick.

Chris blinks, and I immediately know it has slipped his mind as well. How convenient. "I'm pretty sure someone will be bringing your antidotes tonight. I'll talk to Rae. It should be fine."

I release a sigh. 'Should be' and 'pretty sure' don't exactly cut it for me. This is my life on the line, and I'll likely be dead before the next full moon without those pills, or the damage to my internal organs might be irreversible by then. Besides, after two weeks or so the pills have begun to work more effectively. My nightmares tend to come less frequently now. I also find I'm able to sleep a lot longer than before, and I don't want to fall back into that hell again for missing a few pills. The nausea, however, has been just as bad as the first day and even though the antidote can make it go away pretty instantly, it tends to come back with a vengeance about three hours before it's time for my next pill, which is about 6 am every morning. Needless to say, having had no antidote for the past thirty-six hours is not only killing me slowly, but it also means that I haven't managed to hold any food down since that morning. As a result, I'm hungry, nauseous, exhausted, and pissed enough to stick a knife into anything alive the moment I am given an opportunity. I want to at least yell at somebody, or rasp a complaint at how unorganized this shit is, but I don't want any of them to think I'm a panicky little human girl. I also don't want to tell them about my clumsiness that has led me to flush a pill down a goddamn toilet, so I keep my mouth shut and pretend that I believe someone will bring me the antidotes on a gold tray. Deep down, I don't believe it one bit.

Chris drops me off somewhere near the bar and I walk the rest of the way. There are two of his men trailing me, as usual, and inside the bar, there would be more eyes and ears. I look at my watch and it says eleven. Usually, I stay out until two or three in the morning before I return to my cabin, but tonight I think I'm going to wrap it in a couple of hours and head back early. My head feels like it's about to explode any minute, and all I want is to go home and lie down. Hopefully by then my new batch of antidote would have been delivered. Hopefully.

Luckily, no one follows me home that night so I didn't have to fight anyone while having the urge to run to the toilet every five minutes. I dismissed Chris' men who usually escort me to my door after a night out, saying that I want to stop by a friend's place after. By that time I was experiencing nausea, headache, and fever, and I was sick at having to pretend I feel just fine.

By some miracles, I still manage to drag myself home in that state and get myself inside. It's 2 am and I haven't heard from any of the four vampires I have been in contact with. There are no antidotes anywhere in my house either, no notes to comfort me that someone is working on it. I curse all of them in my head and make my way into the kitchen for some cold water and wash my face hoping that it would cool down my fever a bit. Just then, I hear a noise coming from the front of the cabin. It's the sound of footsteps of two people, no, three, that tells me they've just stepped inside my house.

Did I leave the front door open? I question myself as I clumsily reach for the gun in my jacket. The fever and headache combination is making me slow and disoriented. I've not once forgotten to lock my door when I enter, but that night I suddenly can't remember if I have. The intruders are closer now to the entrance of my kitchen, and a part of me is hoping that it might be Rae, Chris, and perhaps Lucien that have decided to bring me the antidote. The problem is by now I can recognize Rae's and Chris' footsteps, and I know for sure it's not them.

I draw a breath position myself behind the door, my back pressed tight against the wall. Three intruders aren't something I can't handle even when I'm unarmed, but at that point, I can hardly stand up straight from the fatigue and fever.

The first one enters, and I kick hard on the door to slam it in his face. He stumbles back, groaning at the nose I've just broken. The other two rush into the room, and I trip one down with my foot before rolling away behind the dining table for cover and shoot at the third man with my Glock. It misses, thanks to my weakened state, and it takes me several more shots until a bullet finds its way in his chest. The cry I've earned from it tells me they're vampires, not humans, who've followed me home, which means one should be down for good by my silver bullet, but the other two —

A hand grips my hair from behind and throws me against the nearby wall like I'm a stuffed animal. My head bangs against the wood and for a moment, my vision blurs. The next thing I know, I'm staring at a pair of grotesquely sharp fangs a hand away from my face. The gun has been knocked out of my hand and I can't seem to get at the knife I've stashed in my jacket. I close my eyes just before the fangs descend on my throat. I'm going to die tonight, and I know it. Well, at least I'll die fighting vampires and not poisoned by one.

A crack sounded next to my ear, followed by a thud of something being tossed across the room. I open my eyes and I see a red spot on the wall to my left — a splatter of blood the size of a basketball dripping down the polished wood. On the floor, directly underneath it, lies a head — the severed head of the vampire who attacked me. I look down and at my feet and I see the body whose neck has been ripped clean off and is bleeding all over my boots. There is no one else in the room, at least not anymore, except the two corpses and me.

There was a fourth person in my house, I realize with panic crawling up my spine. More importantly, where is the third vampire?

I limp over to the gun, wincing at the ankle that seems to have been sprained pretty badly during the attack. There's a noise outside the house like someone is running and then crashing into something. I grumble as I try to balance my weight on one leg and stand up straight. Whatever that thing is out there that has ripped the head off a vampire is coming back into the house, or the third vampire is, I'm certain, and I have to be ready. The problem is, with my sprained ankle I can't run or use my legs to kick anything worth the effort, and my fever is dulling all my senses like I've just been given a big dose of sedative. The only chance I have is to shoot down the intruder from a distance, and I have just one bullet left in my Glock.

Someone enters the house again, alone this time, his footfall unhurried and unnervingly sure. My heart accelerates as he draws nearer, pumping my veins full with adrenaline. The gun feels slick in my hands and I grip it harder. When a pair of black boots step into the room, I take a long breath, hold it, and pull the trigger.


	7. The Arrogance of Men

— VERONICA —

From the dark shadow of the corridor, Remus steps into the light and pauses to look at me.

"I thought I've told you these don't work on me." He raises a hand, and between his thumb and index finger is my silver bullet.

He's wearing a tux this time with the top three buttons of his white, crisply pressed shirt undone and a bowtie hanging loose on either side of the collar. The man looks like he's just returned from a wedding or some upper-class reception. No wings this time. This visit, I conclude from the evidence, hasn't been planned.

"Besides, I may be a little late, but there's really no need to shoot at first glance, Miss Wolf," he says, placing the bullet on the table and scowls at the blood on his hands in disgust. "May I use your sink?"

I stare at him in disbelief for a moment. The man strides into my home whenever he likes, puts poison into my drink when I'm not looking, leaves his underlings to babysit me like I'm some kind of a low-level subject he can't bother dealing with, and then he asks me for permission to use a sink. I don't know if I should consider him well-mannered or incredibly rude, but at that moment I can only nod in response. My head is only half working, and I can't even form a sentence to describe what I'm feeling.

He strides to my poor old sink that suddenly seems wrong when he stands in front of it. I grimace at that logic, at how he manages to make my entire middle-class kitchen seem out of place just for being in it. He turns on my faucet and washes his hands like he's in a marble powder room at some six-star hotel I can't afford. Then I see the blood spiraling down the drain, and it pulls me out of my stupor, reminding me that there is actually a severed head in my kitchen — and probably another somewhere outside my house — because of those hands.

Whatever food I've retained from the bar that night suddenly threatens to come back up. "I need to use the bathroom," I say, running over to the toilet in the living room. I don't know why I felt compelled to excuse myself in my own home, but as much as I hate to admit it, the man's presence does exude some kind of authority that demands it. Under normal circumstances, I should have been able to resist such an urge easily, but by that time I can only think of running to the nearest toilet to puke my guts.

A few minutes later, as I support myself on the toilet seat throwing up the content of my stomach, Remus appears by the door I'd left open in a hurry when I ran here.

"When was the last time you took the pill?" He asks agitatedly.

"Yesterday morning," I reply, pushing back my hair with one hand as I continue retching so I don't get puke on it. Thanks to my Victoria's Secret curls, the effort is pretty much useless.

"Here," Remus sighs in irritation and steps forward to gather my hair into his hands, holding it up and away from my face. I want to tell him to leave me alone, but I'm too busy emptying my stomach to make the effort. His careful fingers touch my forehead when I move, and I nearly jump from the coolness of them against my skin. I don't remember them being that cold the last time they grazed my hand, but then my fever must be sky-high right now and that could be why.

I head to the sink to clean myself up afterward, and despite my several attempts to dismiss him, Remus hovers nearby like a vulture over a soon-to-be-dead injured animal. I hate it that he's seeing me in this state, and he's not being at all discreet about his disapproval of my appearance.

It's bad enough that he has such leverage over me, now I have to suffer the sighs and irritating gestures he shows while witnessing how much of a mess I am. To make the matter worse, I happen to look like a tramp who can't stop throwing up from having had too much to drink — thanks to Chris. How absolutely fabulous.

"Take one now," he says, placing a small glass vial filled with clear green pills on the counter. While I can guess they're my new batch of antidotes, I hesitate a little for the fact that the last ones were blue.

"Why did you skip a dose?" he asks, stepping back to lean against the opposite wall and keeping his eyes on my reflection in the mirror. I notice then, for the first time, that he looks a bit pale. He's also been scowling periodically like there's a bad taste lingering in his mouth he can't get rid of, and I'm pretty sure it's not just because he can't stand the sight of me.

"Because I enjoy puking my guts out 24/7," I snap at him. My anger is seeping again from all the symptoms combined. Why, he asks. As if I want any of this to happen and that everything is my fault and not his. I pick up the antidotes and pop one in my mouth at that thought. I decided it doesn't matter if they're green or blue. They're my only chance at surviving this anyway. "I lost one, and it's not like you gave me spares." You insufferable, arrogant, prick. That part I manage to hold back. As mad as I am, I have to start minding what I say, or I might find a knife in my back from one of his overly loyal subordinates one day.

He grimaces and shifts his weight as if I'd actually sworn at him out loud. "You could have told Rae earlier. She can contact us to get you more in case of emergency. There's really no need to endure it just because you're too proud to ask for help. Try to be a bit more mature next time. It will make things easier."

It takes me a colossal amount of energy to not respond to that with a language that would shame a sailor. After everything I've suffered since he's shown up at my door, this arrogant prick manages to come to the conclusion that it's my fault and has the nerves to chastise me for being both proud and immature. I don't consider myself a person with a bad temper, but he seems to be an expert at making me one. On top of the fact that I've already been pissed enough to kill, thanks to the symptoms he'd so generously bestowed upon me, his attitude is sending my rage through the roof.

I push myself off the sink and wheel, ready to offer him a mouthful of my 'immaturity' as he calls it, only to realize that my body disagrees completely with me. My vision blurs and the room spins like I've just had ten shots of vodka, causing me to lose my footing and stumble towards where he's been standing. Remus grabs me by the upper arm before I fall face-first onto the bathroom tiles and tries to pull me back up on my feet. It doesn't work. There's no energy left in my limbs, my skin feels like it's being boiled from the inside, and yet I'm shivering like someone has just thrown a bucket of ice on me.

Remus swears under his breath and wraps his arm around my waist, pulling me up again, this time with more success. "You're burning up," he says irritatingly as he lifts me onto the counter next to the sink. "Where's the towel?" He asks, and I point to the tall cabinet near the door. My consciousness is slipping, and all I want to do is collapse on my bed, but I know as much as he does that something has to be done about my sky-high fever or I might go into seizure before the antidote kicks in. So I Iet him help me for now because there's nobody else and I can't do shit for myself in that state.

He returns with a small towel and turns on the faucet, testing the water's temperature with his hand before putting the cap on the drain. "I have to take off your jacket," he grumbles irritatedly like it's a nuisance and he just wants to get it over with, but for the sake of manner, he has to wait for my permission.

I nod, wondering if I've ever met a guy who asks for permission to take off my clothes before in my life when an opportunity knocks. His manner is impeccable, but it's definitely not out of a desire to please or impress. It's more like he's been trained to do these things, like a high born son of some lord who spends half his childhood learning how to hold a fork and walk in the way that makes the rest of us look like his lowly servants.

He peels off my jacket quickly, and even though I can feel his hand brushing my bare shoulders, he shows no intention to linger or savor any of it. I have a feeling he's in as much of a hurry as I am to get this fever under control as if he's also suffering from it. Why, I have yet to draw a conclusion. I have my suspicions, but I won't jump into it until I'm certain.

So I let him wipe me down as I observe him more closely, taking care not to show too much attention that it might alert him of what I'm trying to find out. From what I can see, he seems to be holding back a grunt as he wipes me down. Hip lips are pressed so tightly together they're almost white, and his unsettling gray eyes seem a little glazed over. He blinks a lot, and that girlishly long and thick, jet-black lashes make it more obvious. His jaw clenches tight sometimes, especially when my shiver grows intense. Then all the gestures relax a little when I'm a bit cooler, and my headache lessens to a more manageable degree. I look at my watch and fifteen minutes had passed since I've taken the antidote. The drug is already working, slowly, but working. All of the symptoms are down by maybe about thirty percent. I can feel it, but more importantly, I can see it on his face, in the way his stiff shoulders appear more relaxed.

I must have slipped a grin at my new discovery because he pauses and looks at me all of the sudden.

"You're enjoying this. Why?" He asks, his sharp eyes focus on my face as the towel in his hand comes to a stop on my upper arm. He's on to me, and I know it.

Or maybe not.

I figure there are two ways I can deal with this. I can try to deny his suspicions to my grave and hope he'll buy it, or I can turn it into something else.

"I'm being serviced by a vampire," I say, offering him a wider grin this time. "A vampire of rank, no less. What's not to like?" In a way, I'm not exactly lying. It does feed my ego to see him work for me for a change.

He lets out a small chuckle as he puts down the towel and lets the water out. "Perhaps I have an ulterior motive, considering what you're wearing," he says, and for the first time makes a point at staring at my breasts.

I hold back a grin and let him feast his eyes on me. So, he's not insusceptible to sexual desires, and, according to Rae, I need him to drink my blood to get even. I can work with that. "The fact that you're a thousand years old doesn't give you the right to preach on what I'm wearing."

He takes a step back, crosses his arms over his chest and drags his gaze slowly over my curves. "The fact that I'm a man should tell you that that outfit is enough to give me a very, very vivid imagination of what's underneath it," he says and smiles at me arrogantly. "And I wouldn't put my faith on any man's capacity for self-control when it comes to sex, fifteen or five thousand years of age. But for your information, I'm just a little over three-hundred."

I lift a brow and play with a lock of hair around my finger, pretending to look for split ends. The moment he mentioned the word sex, I know he's taken the bait. Good, I think, I can totally play this game. "Even for a vampire of rank?"

He grins. "Especially for a vampire of rank," he says and shifts his weight a little. "I see the antidote is working."

It probably is, because now I don't feel so bad anymore. More importantly, neither does he.

"I suppose you figured that out from looking at my breasts?" I give him a sweet, innocent smile. I want to see how far I can lead him down that path. How much capacity for self-control he really does have when it comes to sex.

He catches my eyes, holds it, and rises to the occasion. "As much as I enjoyed looking at your breasts," he says, rubbing his thumb on the sleeve of his left arm, "I figured that out from the way you utilized your tongue —which is rather impressive, by the way —but perhaps it's better suited for something else."

"Don't get your hopes up," I tell him. "I'm not about to suck your cock anytime soon."

He sucks in a breath, and I congratulate myself inwardly. The smile he gives me afterward makes me nervous, however.

"Don't worry. I'm not going to let you sleep your way out of this, Veronica," he says, rolling my name on his tongue like he's already tasting me in his mouth. "My discipline is quite intact when it comes to work, I assure you."

"I never gave you permission to use my first name," I cross my legs as I tell him, his breath hitches a little as the tip of my boot brush softly against his trouser.

He steps closer and places his hands on the counter, trapping me between his arms. "I figured since you had the audacity to address my cock, we've passed that point of formality a while ago, wouldn't you say?"

I lift my chin up to sneer at him. My heart is thumping so loudly that I start to worry how capable his vampire's ears are and if he can hear it. If he can, he's not giving me any indication. "On the contrary," I say, "I was only addressing your inappropriate imagination."

"My inappropriate imagination," he repeats, draws a long, sharp breath and makes sure I see it. "Have a care, Veronica," he says, tracing each syllable of my name with the same scrutiny as a chef trying to size up a dish. "You don't want to know how inappropriate my imagination can be, or what I've considered doing to you just now."

I know what he's doing. He's trying to turn the table on me, to see if he can make me squirm and beg for it. While I admit he's hot enough to melt the leather off my boots, and the thrill of playing with this fiercely intelligent, highly dangerous creature excites me to no end, I'm not exactly a harmless little mouse he can intimidate into submission. You can't change the arrogance of men, but you can always turn it into their weakness and use it to get what you want, someone once told me. Some men are a lot easier to bend than to break, and I'm about to find out what Remus Valentin is really made of, among other things.

Uncrossing my legs, I attempt to send something through the bond, even though I have no clear idea of how to do it, or whether it will work. I send him an image of me, doing exactly what I think he wants, and a little more.

Remus stiffens as he stares at me, his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat. The moment he closes his eyes and lets out a ragged, unnaturally long breath, I know I hit the jackpot. When he opens them again, the smile he gives me sends a torrent of shiver down my spine.

"I don't know who told you about the bond." I hold my breath as he leans closer and sniffs my hair, his lips brush softly on my left cheek. He puts a hand on my right knee and drags it up my thigh, before clamping down on it with an abruptness that nearly makes me whimper in response, "but try to play me again, and I'll make that image you put in my head a reality — a much, much worse reality than you can imagine with your pathetic level of experience, I promise you."

It's my turn to swallow. He knows I know about the bond, and that I'm testing it to see if I can use it against him. I'm also aware that I'm walking on dangerous grounds, that it only takes a flick of his wrist to rip my head off or do whatever it is he wants to do with me. But there's always a catch if one chooses to look for it. I have nothing to lose and he does, and I happen to know what he's afraid of. The very fact that he hasn't crossed the line and appears to have no intention to cross it confirms my suspicion.

According to Rae, the bond is complete if he drinks my blood, and the connection would no longer be one way. It means I'll be able to sense his strong emotions, his pleasures, his pains, the way he's probably feeling mine. That, there, is my leverage if I can get him to feed on my blood— a task that might be as simple as biting my lip during a kiss or smearing my blood on a limb, among other things. The problem is that he knows it, and he's going to try to not let it go that far, but I have to wonder what he treasures more, his ego, or his control.

"Do you know what my pathetic level of experience tells me?" I ask, tracing a finger down the exposed skin of his chest from the collarbone to the third button that has been left undone. "That you don't have the guts to do it even if I give you an impression of me on all fours with my mouth around your cock."

And then I send another image down the bond.


	8. I’ll Sleep Tomorrow

\- LUCIEN-

The room smells like cigarettes —another human habit that's pretty difficult to get rid of. It's not that I hate it, but the scent overpowers everything else's and numbs my senses a bit too much than I'm comfortable with. I walk to the balcony to open the glass folding doors to let the breeze in and another stench hits my nose. It's the smell of the city — the pollution, the reek of garbage, and the nauseating stink of the sewers. I don't know how they stand it, but then my sense of smell is a lot stronger than that of humans and most vampires.

'Just stay inside and light some candles,' Chris would say with that half-smile that brightens the room, leaving whatever it was he'd been doing to light me a scented candle. It helps, which is why I tell Rae to keep some in her apartment at all times for when I visit. She never leaves them out though, for the reason that it takes up her workspace. It doesn't matter how big of an apartment we get her, Rae ends up piling her stuff in every corner of her space and commands the cleaning lady that no documents are ever moved from their spots. That's the problem with unorganized people — they can find everything in the pool of mess they've created, but they can't find a damn pen if you move it to the stationery drawer with a sign on it. I've given up trying to tidy up her place. It doesn't really matter if the mess gives me a headache, so long as she continues to excel at her job. And she does excel at her job, to the point that I don't think I've ever sired another vampire as brilliant as she is. She can be a pain though, with her smoking habits and her exceedingly blunt way of saying things, but she's definitely not full of crap or any annoying girly habits that may interfere with getting a job done. Her love interest revolves around weapons rather than a person, which is a plus. Although I can see from the mess and the faint smell of bodily fluids lingering in these rooms that she does entertain herself with men — and women — sometimes. It's just that none of them had ever been able to tie her down, which makes things a lot less complicated for all of us.

I walk over to the kitchen to look for a scented candle she usually stashes in one of the cabinets and found a couple — rose and lavender. I pick the latter and light it on the black-marbled kitchen island before heading over to the espresso machine to make some coffee. Coffee, I have to admit, is one of the few human habits I rather enjoy, mostly because Chris happens to make one hell of espresso I can't get anywhere else. I wince a little at the sharp pain that rises in my chest as that memory resurfaces. Some cravings take a long time to dissipate, if ever. I wonder when it will stop.

The espresso in my cup tastes mediocre. I suppose Chris doesn't come here a lot or he would have picked the beans and the machine himself. I don't know if I'm glad or bothered about that fact. A part of me wants him to move on, and the other...

The other part of me can't bear the thought of someone else filling that hole I've left in his life.

Someone probably has, I sneer at my own naivety. I haven't seen him in a decade, even though he continues to work for me through Rae, and I can't count the times I've felt that wave of pleasure through the bond. How many times it has driven me close to the edge and ripped apart all my ability to reason. I can't think straight when he tugs on the bond, which is a lot stronger than those of other vampires I've sired because of how close we were.

It's the reason why I need Veronica Wolf dead before she becomes a problem. I know how it feels, how much a bond that strong can influence one's decision, and if a one-sided bond from a single drop of blood can get Lord Remus to lose that much appetite, I don't want to think about what would happen if it's ever completed. It's my job to make sure that doesn't happen, even if Lord Remus believes he can handle it. He's one of the most disciplined and sensible vampires I know when it comes to self-control, but the very fact that he's already been drawn to give her his blood raises a red flag to me. In three hundred years, only Lord Marcus had had a taste of it, and he was a friend, a trusted companion with the same agenda. Veronica Wolf is a human and one that makes a profession out of hunting vampires.

The risk is phenomenal, enough so that I have to call in my best to watch her personally. I need someone I can trust explicitly, someone intelligent enough to catch things before they happen. That's Rae, and since Rae doesn't work on an operation-level job without Chris, I had to pull him back into the loop against his will. The fact that Lord Remus wants me to oversee this operation personally also means I'm going to have to come here a lot, which complicates things on a whole other level than simply trying to live with the stench of cigarettes in Rae's apartment. All because of Veronica Wolf.

The door clicks open, and Rae walks in with what looks like a takeaway from Burger King in her arms, kicking the door closed with her foot. More than a hundred years have passed since she was turned, and still, she retains most of her old habits. Junk food, cigarette, and TV series still entertain her a lot.

She pauses for a second when she sees me, and then continues toward the kitchen, dumping her shoulder bag on the sofa and then her burger on the island next to my coffee mug.

"Have you been here long?" She asks, heading to the fridge to grab a bottle of beer.

I look at my watch. It's 12:15 am. "Ten minutes."

"You should have told me you were coming," says Rae as she sits down on the bar stool on my right. "I could have gotten here earlier."

"And get in the way of your Whopper craving? I'm not that cruel." She knows I don't like to wait, and since being here requires me to stay up way past my usual bedtime, I like to wrap things up as quickly as possible when I come for reports. My work on the other side usually ends at sunrise and begins at sunset, which is about six for both, except on a day like this where I have to accompany Lord Remus to a reception and make sure he returns safely back to the estate. I could have sent just Mel and Dmitri when the threat is minimal, but Lord Remus hasn't been well lately — thanks to Veronica Wolf — and I don't trust anyone else for the job. Thankfully, he didn't linger at the party today and excused himself just before twelve. The truth is, he hasn't been staying out that long since Lord Marcus was gone, not since he's recovered from the depression that lasted nearly half a decade. It was one hell of a mess, and just thinking about it gives me a headache.

It must have shown, or she must have felt it through the bond, because Rae lets out a sigh and puts her hand on my shoulder. "How is he holding up?"

I run a hand through my hair and draw a breath. "Well enough, I think," I tell her. Rae knows a lot about what happened, partly because she's the only one I trust enough to talk to, and partly because she's close to Chris. "Too well, in fact, that I'm afraid he's simply channeling it into something else as opposed to recovering. He takes a lot of risks now, even if it's for the sake of this election." Considering a marriage contract with Aelia Valaris is one of those things I've advised against without success. Which reminds me I should call in the spies I've sent to the Eastwood for reports. Surely there's enough time for me to squeeze that in between tomorrow's staff meeting and Lord Remus' weekly visit to the West Tower. I can read the reports I haven't finished tonight after I'm done with Rae, sleep it off for a couple of hours and be up by sunset.

"You think that's why he's given Vera his blood?"

I stop sipping my coffee and look up at her, my mind running through a series of possible risks and more things I have to do because of that knowledge. "She told you about that?" I didn't think she would. Veronica Wolf, from the information I've gathered, is careful to the point of being paranoid at times especially around our kind. The fact that she's told a vampire of her being poisoned by Lord Remus' blood, showing her weakness, raises a flag to me. There's an incentive to that, I'm certain of it.

"She wants to know how to get more antidotes in case of emergency," Rae says, then chomps down on her burger. "That's why you called us in, wasn't it? You should have told me, but then you didn't want me to know about the bond, did you?"

There's an edge to her tone that tells me she's pissed that I'd withheld that information, and I don't blame her. It's not that I didn't trust her enough, but the fewer people know about the bond, the safer it is for Lord Remus, which also means less work for me.

"I should have," I tell her, not wanting to explain myself on the issue. "I'm sorry. What did you tell her?"

She takes another bite and mumbles, "That she can tell me when she needs more antidote." Then she glances at me. "I also told her about the bond."

A bad feeling erupts in the pit of my stomach, along with a generous amount of agitation that makes me glare at her. "And why would you do something that stupid?"

Rae picks up the beer bottle and takes a gulp, lifting her index finger from another hand at my face. "One," she says, "Because I want to know how much she knows about it, and if she understands how to use it — which she doesn't, not yet anyway." Another finger follows the first. "Two. When you're dealing with someone as smart as Veronica Wolf, you need to narrow down the number of ways she can strike at you. A girl like that isn't going to let you shit on her and get away with it. She's going to strike back, and by showing her the way, we now know what to look for. If she makes a move to pull that string, you'll be ready for it." The third finger flies up to join the rest. "Three, and here's a bonus. Knowing how much you must want her dead right now, the sooner she strikes, the sooner you'll be given a command to get rid of her." She takes a big bite into her Whopper and sends me a look of warning. "If you ever call me stupid again, you can find a new Head of Operation. For your apology, I will be expecting a new Katana by the end of next week. A gold one. Thank you."

Leave it to Rae, to come up with such elaborate ways to lure her prey out of the den. I remind myself again why I trusted her with this operation. That's what she's good at. Catching people with incentives, and cutting them down before they can become a problem. She's right on all her points. I need to know how much Wolf knows about our weaknesses, and if she intends to strike, I'd rather leave a door wide open to make sure she comes through that one instead of worrying about others I can't see. The third point, however, is what I'm having trouble being convinced, or rather having trouble trying to convince Lord Remus to issue such a command given the heated conversation we had about a week ago. I know he's interested in her. Lord Remus has never been able to resist a good challenge, and Veronica Wolf is probably the first and the only female alive to have ever tried to attack him, being human and having her back pushed against the wall no less. I've seen the way she looked at him with her murderous rage. More importantly, I've seen the way he looked at her. The excitement in those eyes was unmistakable, and I could almost smell the adrenaline bursting in his veins as his heartbeat quickened to twice its usual speed. I haven't seen him reacted to anything this much since Lord Marcus died, which would have been a good sign of recovery if only he hadn't decided to give her his blood. One word of this gets out, and his enemies would be here in an instant, fighting each other to get their hands on her to use as leverage against him. My head throbs just thinking about the mess. I have to get rid of her quickly, somehow, without making it a deliberate attempt to defy his orders to leave her alone.

"I hope you're right," I tell Rae with a heavy sigh. "I really do."

She shakes her head and mimics my gesture. "You need a break," she says, looking up and down my state of exhaustion. "When was the last time you really slept?"

"I'll sleep tomorrow." I give her a half smile. There hasn't been a shortage of work to be done, really, especially with the election coming up. Or so I keep telling myself that lie. Lord Remus never works me that hard or requires me to do anything beyond my responsibility as a seneschal. I'm just afraid to stop, afraid of having time. I'm terrified of what will happen to me if I stop long enough to realize what I've done, what I've lost, that there is an absence of something I can't live without. It's not a break that I need. It's —

A wave of something hit me through a bond and I stiffen. My entire body goes rigid despite all my efforts to force myself to calm. I know this day would come. I've known it, imagined it every day for the past ten years. How ignorant of me, to think that I'm well prepared for this, because I'm not. Far from it.

Rae looks down at my coffee cup and then at the door to her apartment. She must have noticed the ripples in my coffee, and the way my knuckles turn white as my grip tightens around it all of the sudden. "He said he'd join me for dinner," she says carefully. "Is he close?"

Close enough for me to feel it in my bones, I want to say. "Yes," I reply and go back to sipping the content of my cup quietly. I can't taste a thing, not anymore, not when I'm concentrating so hard on pulling up a wall around me. I can't let him see any of if — the turmoil rolling in my chest, the anxiety that disarms me, my indecision in everything I'd done and in what I need to do.

"Lucien," Rae says, placing a hand on mine. "Be gentle, please."


	9. Mine

— LUCIEN —

The chime rings twice, and it takes a phenomenal effort for me not to wince at it. Rae reaches for her phone and unlocks the door, eyeing me as she does. The door clicks open, and suddenly the room is filled with his presence. I take another sip of my coffee, pretending that I haven't noticed, or that I have but am paying no attention to it.

"I got your favorite cheesecake," Chris says jovially. "You wouldn't believe what I had to —" He stops in the middle of the sentence and halts his steps, his body as still and rigid as a statue when he sees me. It's a surprise, of course, or he wouldn't have made it up on the elevator. I know how to conceal my presence, even to those I've sired and drank from. It takes years of experience and a hell of a lot of practice to master, but for the number of vampires I'm bonded with, it's either this or I'd leave myself open to all of them.

"Hello, Chris." I look up from my coffee and give him a smile, despite the hollowness in my stomach that suddenly appears at the sight of him. He looks just like when I'd last seen him, even though he seems to have kept his hair a little longer and his curls a lot less tidy. The jeans he's wearing are a pair I don't recognize, and neither is the black cotton shirt with black silk trimmings on the hems of its sleeves and collar. It's wrong and selfish of me, to feel so irritated by that last fact. I have no right. None. "You're just in time."

From the distance, Chris stares at me like I'm a monster in his nightmares that has suddenly materialized in front of him. I don't know what disturbs me more — the hurt or the pure hatred in those blue eyes. He draws a breath, clamps his mouth shut, and then walks over to the island, keeping his attention on Rae as though she were the only one in the room.

Dumping the bags in his hand on the marble top in front of Rae, Chris continues to ignore me completely as he opens one for her to see. "There's a cheesecake and some scones in here. Knock yourself out. I'll see you tomorrow," he says with a half smile, kisses Rae on the cheek, then turns back to head out the door.

Something tears inside of me, and I steel myself to not let it show. I know Chris can't stand the sight of me, and for what I've done he has every reason to feel that way. I get why he doesn't want to stay. I understand it enough to let him leave, but something inside me boils at seeing him walk away from me. Something that lies at the pit of the cruelest, most disgusting part of me can't live with the way he's dismissed me like I'm not in the room like I don't exist. I tell myself that it's because I'm his superior and I need to do something about such a display of insubordination, that this is a job, nothing more. It's a lie I can safely hide behind, and I cling to it as hard as I cling to the memory of what we were.

"Chris," I say sharply, the name tastes like acid in my mouth and pricks me like I'm trying to swallow a pin. " _Sit down_."

He pauses and looks over his shoulder at the sound of my voice. His blue eyes burning with too many emotions than I can pick apart. "No," he says firmly, decisively like it's the only possible response to my suggestion.

I swallow the bile in my throat, along with any decency I have left in me and put my foot down. "That is an order." He can't say no to that, not as long as he works for me. For everything we've lost, Chris is still my subordinate, my creation, my weapon. _Mine_.

I expect him to sigh and walk back to the kitchen, to slump down on the chair with a temper, to kick something nearby to show his anger the way he's always done when he's mad at me. Chris wears his emotions on his sleeves, and I've never minded his tantrums, as long as he stays at the end of my leash. Walking away from me had never been a choice. It hadn't even been a possibility. I'm ready for anything he throws at me, ready to forgive all of it if he would turn around and do what I say the way he'd always ended up doing in the past when we fought.

Instead, he snarls at me, his white fangs showing. " _Fuck you._ "

Something snaps inside of me, and I shoot off my seat in seconds, long before I realize what I'm doing or what I intend to do. The next thing I know, my right hand is wrapped tight around his throat, pinning him against the wall. My own fangs have descended, and the sound of my feral, murderous growl fills the room.

I've lost it. My rage is blinding and has risen way past my capacity for control. Through our bond, Rae tugs at me nervously to calm me down. Through Chris', however, I feel nothing but pain and complete resignation. He smiles at me ruefully, hurtfully, like he's just remembered a wound he's forgotten long ago that hasn't yet healed, and that I've just pried it open again with my bare hands.

"Go ahead," he says quietly like he's exhausted and just wants things to be over, "do what you should have done a long time ago. I don't give a damn anymore."

Pain, unforgiving, mind-numbing pain drags its claws down my chest, straight to where that horrid absence in my existence lies, unprotected and exposed. He's tugging at my bond, pleading, begging me to end it. I know I can do this for him. I can give him what he'd always wanted, what I'd selfishly taken from him a long time ago for my own advantage and shaping into everything I lacked and needed. I can finish this, clean up the mess I've created. Do something right for once, for someone.

But my selfishness goes far beyond that, so far that I can't see the end or the bottom of it. I can't kill him. I can't let him go or give him the freedom he wants. Chris is mine. He's the one possession in my life I can't let go, even if it means locking him up in this endless loop of pain and torture I'm already putting him through.

"I'm not going to kill you," I tell him, loosening my grip around his throat but keeping him pinned to the wall, "not today, or tomorrow, or a century from now." _You are mine_ , the voice in my head grows louder by the second, so loud that I wonder if he can hear it through the bond. "You may leave, but the next time you so much as raise your voice at me, I'm not going to kill you, Chris." I take a step nearer, until I can see the purple ring around his blue eyes, until the tip of his nose is a hairbreadth from mine, "I'm going to come after everyone and everything you love, until you get it into your head that you work for me, and that's how it's going to be until I say I'm done with you. Do I make myself clear?"

The hate in his eyes matches the searing pain in my chest in intensity, and for a moment I think he is going to knock me down to the ground. The truth is, I wouldn't mind it, and deep down I want him to. I want someone to punish me for what I've done, for the selfish, entitled prick that I am. I want him to look at me like I'm the center of his universe again, even if it's only hatred and disgust that he's willing to give. I tell myself I'd be content if he tries to beat me to a pulp, as long as all his attention is poured on me and me alone. But Chris only sneers at my threat, like he's given up on trying to fight me altogether like he couldn't bother to waste his energy on me.

"Crystal," he says, shaking me off and then heads out the door.

I watch him go with an unforgivable sense of victory I shouldn't have. The darkest part of me savors in the satisfaction that, for all the hatred he harbors for me now, he is still on my leash, still mine to do with as I please. For ten years I thought I was content with letting him loose, that I could function with nothing more than an awareness of his existence on the other end of the bond. I've come here expecting to reconcile, believing that his wounds — our wounds — would have healed enough for us to be able to work together at least the same way I work with other subordinates, if not as friends. But the moment he walked into the room, I knew immediately how impossible, how foolish that thought is. I'm drawn to him like a long-term drug addict being offered a bag full of it in the middle of rehabilitation. I crave his attention, his devotion, his careful affection for me like it's the air I breathe as if I've been drowning for the past decade and has just resurfaced when he walked back into my life. It's a mess that I don't know how to get out of. His love is my poison, and I can't find the antidote.

"That went well," Rae says from behind me, her arms crossed over her chest. She hates me for this, I know. Chris is like a brother to her, and he probably tells her everything.

I ignore the remark and head back to the kitchen. I don't like explaining myself to people, especially when it comes to something private. The coffee has turned cold, of course, not that I still want to drink any of it after that fight. I need something stronger. Something that can calm me down, and numb some of my senses enough to do what I've come here for. I need blood, and I know Rae keeps some in her fridge, but that's a bit strong and I can't have hallucinations when I'm trying to work. "Where do you keep your rum?"

Rae brings me a glass and a bottle of dark rum she knows I like, eyeing me as she fills it half way up. I dump the whole content down my throat and gesture for another. It's getting late, and I have places to be after this. I don't have time to wait for the effects to kick in through small amounts.

Next to me, Rae sits down and lights herself a cigarette before handing me one. I stare at the expensive, black and gold cigarette and contemplate whether I really should go that far. I haven't smoked for almost a decade, and the last time I did my sense of smell was gone for days. But my hands still smell of Chris — a wonderful mixture of his favorite musky aftershave, coffee beans, and that peppermint shampoo he always uses — and the more I smell it, the harder it is to keep him out of my mind. So I take the cigarette, and I let the smoke fill my lungs and cover any trace of him that still lingers while Rae gives me a report of everything I need to know about the operation and Veronica Wolf.

Two hours later, I'm standing outside of her cabin a bit further out into the woods, staring up at a headless body of a vampire up in a tree. The head is a few yards nearby on the ground. It's in perfect condition like he's just had his head ripped off without being given a chance to fight back or struggle. I look closer and realize that it's one of the junkies I've indirectly tipped about the cabin earlier that night. I may not be allowed to kill her, but, well, shit happens, especially when you're a girl, living alone in the woods, doesn't it? I wasn't sure if three vampires would be enough to kill her, given how well-trained and well-armed she is, but it doesn't hurt to try. Risky, yes, but I know well enough how to cover my tracks.

This mess, however, isn't made by a human. For the body to have ended up there on the tree, he must have been ripped apart by a pretty powerful vampire, and since both Chris and Rae were way out on the other side of town, there is only one vampire who could have interfered and helped Veronica.

I grimace at that possibility. He can't be here. He shouldn't even know about the attack until it's too late. Not unless he's come before that, for something else.

A bad feeling pools in the pit of my stomach as I teleport into the house, in the kitchen where I think they would be. I look around and all I see is another headless corpse, and another dead vampire with a bullet wound in his chest. There are signs of struggle everywhere — broken glass, knocked down chairs, empty bullet shells — but no one is around. Under normal circumstances, I should have been able to detect his presence if he's really here, but all my senses have been dulled by the rum and the cigarette. It's precisely why I've always avoided it, why I had to walk away from Chris. Every time I've allowed myself to be overwhelmed by him something happens, and one tragedy is already enough to last a lifetime.

A small sound reaches my ear from the living room, and I trace it to the bathroom adjacent to it. The door is half opened, and I can see the silhouettes of two people inside. I wince at the realization that my fear is correct. He's here and has killed those vampires to save her.

On the countertop, Veronica is sitting with her back against the mirror with Lord Remus standing close between her legs, engaging in a conversation I have no right to listen to. But I _am_ his seneschal, and _she_ is a threat I have to take care of. It's my job to know what's going on between the two of them, my job to make sure he doesn't make the wrong decisions. So I stay and hide my presence, listening to the conversation from a distance not so far away.

Rae is right on her predictions. Now that she knows about the bond, Veronica is indeed trying to pull her strings. I should be glad that at least now Lord Remus is fully aware of it, judging from what I'm hearing. He would know better how to deal with her now and the risk of keeping her alive. The problem is what I'm seeing on his face, in his eyes, as his fangs extend to their full length just an inch from her throat. I don't know if he wants to suck her dry as he should or drown himself with the taste of her. My long-time acquired knowledge of him tells me it's the first, but if I'm wrong, if it's nothing but desire and excitement, and the yearning for human blood he hasn't tasted for half a decade that is driving him into this, then some real shit is about to happen and I have to stop it before it does.

 _He is going to kill me for this_ , I think as I step into the bathroom.


	10. Until Next Time

— REMUS —

"My Lord Remus," someone calls me just before my fangs reach her throat, pulling me back to reality. 

My hand pauses in midair on its way to gripping her hair, or to tearing off her clothes, I'm not even sure. My mind has been completely blank for a full minute, from the moment she sent the second image through the bond. Something in me leaped for it without a second thought, and I don't know what it was. Perhaps it's my lack of discipline when it comes to being challenged or the smell of blood on her broken lip from the attack that was dragging me under. Or maybe it's simply the fact that I wanted her, bad enough to throw away all my conscience and better judgment to pin her down and fuck her right on that marble.

I close my eyes and force my fangs to retract, turning to look at Lucien who managed to sneak up on me and interrupted us. It shouldn't have been possible, and it wouldn't have been had I not lost it just now.

"You have a council meeting in four hours, my lord," he says expressionlessly, officially, as if he's interrupting a boring conversation I needed to be rescued from. "I imagine some rest would be beneficial?"

Leave it to my seneschal, to always materialize in the room like my goddamn conscience just in time to stop me when I'm about to do something stupid. Had it been anyone else, I would have skinned them alive for daring to interrupt my sexual pleasure or something equally private, but I know I've lost it this time, and this is Lucien — the one single companion I have left who has pulled me out time after time when I went too far. I do need him in my life, and I did need him just now to pull me back. It was close, too close to putting myself at too much risk than I should. One wrong step and everything I've worked so hard for would come crumbling down. Now that I think about it, a shiver runs down my spine at what might have happened if I had allowed myself to drink her blood. I would lose all control for good, and my enemies would be on me in a heartbeat.

"I'm afraid he's right," I nod at Lucien and give her a smile, bringing her hand to my lips and plant a brief kiss on it. "Until next time, then, Veronica."

I teleport out of the house before she can form a response, and Lucien follows. The truth is, I needed to get away from the proximity of her, or I fear I'd be pulled back into it again. I haven't been excited by a woman for centuries, probably not since the first time I had sex. Probably never. It's dangerous, no matter how I look at it.

"I don't really have a meeting at seven, do I?" I ask, looking at my watch as we walk to the gate. The blue stone on my ring and Lucien's glow brighter the nearer we get closer to it.

Lucien smiles a little, knowing now that I'm more grateful than mad at him. "No," he says, "you have one at nine. Enough time for a cold shower and a few hours of sleep. Unless, of course, if you prefer to have a female sent up to your room."

"No," I tell him with a heavy sigh. I actually do need a woman right now, but I'm also tired enough to sleep for twelve hours for what Veronica has just put me through. I've been severely sick for the last two days, thanks to the bond and her having lost a pill, and when her sky-high fever kicked in, I had to do something besides waiting for Lucien to fix the problem. Which reminds me...

"Why haven't you given her the antidotes?"

He looks at me straight in the eyes, and I see no lies coming, no traces of guilt that I can detect, though I will never be absolutely sure with Lucien. He's been with me more than two hundred years, but he's a lot older than that. How old exactly, I have no idea. I'm only stronger than he is because he's a half-blood, or mixed-blood, I should say. His father was part werewolf, part vampire, and while he retains little of his werewolf traits, his sense of smell is a lot stronger than mine. I remember the day I found him, chained up in the dungeon under that castle, looking up at me with those yellow werewolf eyes from the darkness under his hood. He said my blood smelled like his mother's. I found out later, that his mother was a pureblood too, a line even older than mine. I wonder sometimes, how much stronger he would have been, had they not locked him up for centuries and deprived him of all the training he should have had. Since then, Lucien has been out of captivity for two hundred years, and his power is second only to mine in the entire Westwood estate.

"I've been getting reports from Rae," he tells me easily, with both hands in his pockets, his eyes, as always, sweep the surroundings for potential threats. "Then I went to the cabin to give her the antidote, but apparently you beat me to it. Was there a problem, my lord?"

"She lost a pill." The memory nearly makes me shudder. I felt like I was about to collapse in the middle of that reception, and after pacing back and forth in my room waiting for her to take a damn antidote — which turns out she didn't have — I had to ask Cecilea for another batch thinking I'd shove it down her throat myself if she refused to take it.

"That's why you came?" Lucien winces at that, and I realize then that he must have been through the same thing before. "The symptoms were getting too bad?"

"That, and I could sense her being attacked," I say and take a glance at him. There's something about those three vampires that have been bugging me. Something I can't quite pinpoint. "She would have died had I not been there on time."

Lucien just scowls. "I'll increase security around the house and leave Rae with a little extra pill next time, just in case."

 _It's probably nothing_ , I think, not finding anything out of the ordinary from his expression or his tone. ' _Don't be so paranoid,_ ' Marcus used to say when we strolled through this part of the wood, throwing his arm around my shoulder. He liked walking to the gate, as opposed to teleporting, especially on a full moon like this. I never cared enough to look at it the way he did. Now, when I look up, I wish I'd appreciated it more when he was still around.

"So," I shake the thought from my head, along with the regret I'm feeling, "how is she doing on the job?"

"Brilliantly, I have to admit," Lucien replies with a tone laced with irritation. If he's lying to me in any way, then he's too good at it. Lucien is loyal, but he's not in the habit of pretending he agrees with me when he doesn't. He'd do what I tell him, but he would either do it grumbling or half-heartedly. I know for a fact that he wants me to get rid of Veronica, and he's going to continue to show me that he doesn't like the idea of keeping her alive, but I also know that if he's planning something behind my back, he'd be smart enough to see that the best way to lie is to tell mostly the truth.

"Rae sent her out to bars and pubs almost every night, and so far she's caught three kidnappers in one month. We now have some leads on three middlemen to work with," he continues, then looks at me questioningly. "She asked Rae why we don't just let them kidnap her so we can follow and find out where their base is, especially if you can track her whereabouts."

I raise a brow at that. "She knows I can track her whereabouts?"

Lucien nods. "Wolf told them about her being poisoned by your blood, and Rae thinks it's safer to lure the snake out of the pit quickly if it intends to strike."

"So that's how she knows about the bond." I can see what Rae is doing, and how it's working rather brilliantly. She does intend to strike, and tonight I caught her red-handed. I need to be more cautious when dealing with her or try to avoid her completely. "Who else knows I've given her my blood?"

"Just Rae and ... Chris," he says, and I catch something in his gaze with that pause. Chris. That's the one single male who can stir Lucien well out of his elements and composure. They broke up nearly a decade ago while I was in rehab, and I did wonder how they're dealing with each other when he told me he's brought Chris back into the loop. Apparently, not so good, judging from that pause and the fact that my overly responsible seneschal reeks of alcohol and cigarette. They must have met tonight during the meeting, and something must have gone wrong, but I can't detect anything more than fatigue on Lucien's face. I want to ask him sometimes on these things, but whenever I did, he brushed me off, saying that it's not my responsibility to worry about my subordinate's personal issues. Which is pretty much a respectful way of saying, 'fuck off,' in my opinion. Since then I've been trying to stay clear out of it.

"You do trust them, I suppose?" I do trust Rae, but with the history between the two of them, I'm not sure about Chris.

"I do," he replies without a second thought, which is good enough for me. I know the lengths Lucien will go to to keep my secrets, especially one this important. If he says they can be trusted, I'll trust them.

I nod and look at the gate that's now come into view. The blue glow around it only appears on a full moon. On any other night, it simply disappears and the portal is closed. As a Keeper of the Gates, I can open it whenever I want, and so can Lucien who wears one of the rings that allow him to go in and out freely between realms and anywhere in the Westwood, but tonight the ring isn't needed, which is good because we're both somewhat too exhausted to use any more of our powers.

"Tell them I don't want her to be taken until I say so," I tell Lucien as I step through, "and, by all means, tell Chris to tone her outfit down a bit, will you?" That was really a bit much for my own good, and if I'm to keep myself from devouring her, something less revealing would make my life easier.

Lucien smirks at that. "I was going to say the same thing."


	11. Your Feathery White Wings

The room is blinding white, so white that it takes my eyes a few minutes to adjust to it. Twelve daylight colored UV lights flood lab from the ceiling, and I feel my energy draining from me with every step I take towards the center of the room. From outside, the sound of gunfires and explosions ensue endlessly. It's a big building, armed by more than two hundred men with a silver bullet loaded guns and grenades. Even with the fifty vampires I've brought, it's going to take time to slaughter them all.

And I'm going to slaughter them all, down to the last man standing. I'm going to bring them hell as they've never imagined.

The four scientists in white gowns huddle together in the corner, mumbling something with their eyes closed. They haven't noticed me teleporting into the lab, and why would they when they're too busy praying to whomever they call God. It's almost hilarious how they think it's going to save them. Humans. They shit on everything their God has ever created and then have the nerve to ask for mercy when they're chased into the corner. They shit on us and think there won't be consequences. Such arrogant, pathetic, helpless creatures.

The rain still pours outside, and thunders are roaring so loud it sounds like some sort of an apocalypse. I shake the water off my wings and send a blast of my power across the room. The lights shatter all at once, and the power goes out. Sounds of panic erupt from the outside, and I can hear my soldiers moving in for the kill. I ignore the scientists and head to the bed in the middle of the room, covered on all sides by white curtains with all kinds of tubes and cords hanging around it. A part of me is flooded with relief that I've found him, the other with dread for what I'm about to see behind those curtains.

I take a breath and pull back the fabric. Inside, Marcus is lying unconscious, his beautiful, golden hair is a mess and caked with blood. There are cuts everywhere on his face, his arms, his torso - cuts that haven't healed. _Wolfsbane._ I swear inwardly as I smell it from his blood. They're feeding him Wolfsbane through an IV to keep him weak and slow his ability to heal. There is a large if incision the size of my hand on his thigh, the wound kept opened by a few clamps as they're in the middle of an operation, but the smell of dried blood around it tells me it's been like that for days. They'd kept it opened as they experimented on him, I realize with a flash of anger rising in my chest. There're electrical wires everywhere - wires that are meant for electrocution. My stomach turns at the sight of it, at the evidence of what he's been put through for the last three weeks. White, hot rage courses through my veins as I clench my fists on the bed's railing, its metal groaning as it bends in my grip. I look up and, there I see them, hanging by the right side of the experimenting table, half stained with blood and torn around the edges.

_His feathery white wings._

I jolt awake at the sound of my own scream. The entire floor rumbles underneath my feet as I run straight to the bathroom to hurl up the content of my stomach. My ring is glowing bright blue, keeping my sudden burst of power in check so I don't bring down the entire estate when I lose control. It takes me a full minute to reel it back in and calm myself down. I know the sudden need to throw up wasn't one of the effects of my bond with Veronica. For the past two weeks, the new pills have been working to perfection, and I haven't felt any nausea or headache since then.

No, this is all me. It's the memory, the nightmares that still linger somewhere in my head like a monster hiding in a dark closet, waiting for the right time to come out and eat me alive. For the first five years since Marcus had died, I struggled with it endlessly, and back then nothing else could keep them away except blood - an outrageous amount of human blood. For more than a year I raided the human world, tearing down every organization and slaughtering everyone who was even remotely connected to the cooperation that was using Marcus to create bioweapons. I don't even know how much blood I consumed a day. I was always heavily intoxicated, to the point that I can't recall some of the things I've done. Coming out of such addiction wasn't easy, and even now, after having stayed clear out of it for half a decade, I still crave it like nothing I've ever craved, especially when these nightmares return with a vengeance. It hasn't for a while, though, and I bet it's the report Lucien has given me yesterday that triggered it.

My mood has been sour all evening, and the entire estate knows, judging from the way they all seem to be unusually quiet around me. They all felt the tremors, of course, but by then everyone knows the cause when it happens during those hours and they've learned not to mention it. Lucien, however, made a point at sending up a pot of sweetened sage tea infused with milk of the poppy as soon as I woke up. It's not the closest thing to blood, but it does numb down some of the pain.

Some things never go away no matter what you do. I look at Lucien who's sitting across the table from me, sipping his own tea quietly as he reads the evening's paper and I see it too. Behind that mask of indifference he wears to perfection, there remain layers after layers of scars and wounds that will never heal. The man I saw in that dungeon is still in there, and I could never begin to imagine the centuries of pain and torture they'd put him through while in captivity. Lucien understands me. He also knows exactly what to do to survive, how to live with it, which is why he's joined me for his first meal today, not just to give me company, but to keep me focusing on the presence of someone, rather than an absence of another. I wonder from time to time if there's anything that can ever break my seneschal, and what would happen then.

I choose to fly to the Sky Tower that evening for a council meeting. I need to stretch my wings, breathe some fresh air, escape the world for a moment to clear my head. From the distance, I can see the tall, pencil slim glass tower glowing bright blue, its needle-sharp tip reaching high above the clouds and twinkles to match the stars around it. From the very top of the tower, one can see as far as the snow-capped mountain range in the north, and how remarkably unique the four territories are in their landscapes. The Northwood, the werewolf's territory and the largest of the four, is covered with the grey and white colors of its rocky mountain range, with hundreds of sharp peaks that are always covered in snow even in the summer. The Eastwood is filled with bright green tropical trees and waterfalls, with numerous curving rivers that look like a series of blue veins snaking through the land. My side of the territory, the Westwood, is made up of black volcanic rocks, and cobalt blue lakes surrounded by thick forests of pine trees. The Southwood, my true home and what used to be Marcus' territory, is a land with lush, rolling green hills that never seems to end. Large, centuries-old oak trees dotted along the edge of the forest, and in the summer, wildflowers in more colors than one can imagine spring up from the ground, covering every inch of the fields as far as the eyes can see. We used to race each other for days on horseback when we were young, Marcus and I, returning to the estate all wet and covered in mud that got us grounded for the next several weeks. It had never stopped him from heading out. You couldn't nail him down or lock him in a room any longer than a few hours at a time. He wanted to see, to taste, to hear, to touch and to climb everything just for the sake of it. There were more life and passion in a single man than I've seen in the entire realm we live in. That was why he'd stayed for so long in the human world, why he'd come to care for it, enough to want all the blood trafficking to stop, to close all the gates once and for all. Why he's lying in his grave now.

My childhood friend, my most trusted companion, the closest thing to a brother I'd ever had, and the man who'd made me High Lord of the Westgate, dead, by the hands of the humans he'd tried to protect. I can't hate the ideals that Marcus had lived for, even if it'd killed him, even if I want to, but I can finish what he'd started. It's a testament to his life to remind me of his existence, the only way I can pay him back for everything he'd given me, and the man he'd shaped me into today.

I make my landing on the platform at the top of the tower. Lucien has teleported my guards up there to wait for me. The Sky Tower is the center of command for the realm, the place for council meetings and home for the Chancellor for as long as he's in office. It's situated at the point where the four territories meet, surrounded by a moat ten meters deep and five-hundred meters wide that makes it look more like an island in the middle of a lake than a man-made fort. The building has its own codes, security guards, and a central army to protect it from attacks and any uprising. There are no stairs, no elevators from the twentieth floor up to the top of the one-hundred-floor tower, and the only way to get anywhere past that point is to either fly or teleport into its chambers, half of which are protected by old magic no one alive knows how to undo. It means only vampires and werewolves of pure or old blood can get here, which leaves out the possibility of invasion from a force larger than its army can handle. There aren't enough of us left in the realm for that kind of immobilization, and even if there are, we're usually more interested in fighting each other than working together anyway. The guards we bring are mostly for show, and while most of them usually teleport a lot more up here, I'm in the habit of bringing just Lucien, Mel and Dmitri. Lucien alone is the equivalent of bringing ten well-trained vampires in any case, and Mel and Dmitri - the two of them together - can take care of twice that number.

In the middle of the platform is the High Court where all official meetings take place. It's a glass dome with its own defense system that renders our powers utterly useless once inside. The only fight that can happen in there is a physical one, and I happen to be packing the most lethal three in that department, not to mention there were only two people who had ever managed to knock me down with their fist in the past three centuries, one being my worthless, piece-of-shit father, the other was my best friend now lying in his grave. In other words, nobody fucks with me in that chamber, not even the Chancellor, because if they do, I'll be the only High Lord who gets to walk out of there alive. I may be one arrogant son of a bitch, but every ounce of it comes from being prepared and a century of planning. When you grow up being a sandbag for your own parent who doesn't die, you either fold or you fight with your teeth to survive. I chose the latter, simply because Marcus hadn't allowed me the possibility of seeing anything else as a choice. ' _One day_ ," he'd said, pointing a trembling finger at my father on the dais, ' _I'll drag that piece of shit down from that chair and put you on it.'_ He'd done precisely that, which is why I'm here at all, walking into a council meeting as the Keeper of the Westgate. Marcus was afraid of nothing, no one. He thought everything was possible, even turning the good-for-nothing, abused, pathetic little boy like me into what I am today.

The dome grows quiet the moment I walk in, and every head turns in my direction. My mood is sour tonight and they can feel it. I haven't slept enough and I can't get that nightmare out of my system. It probably shows, because Aelia's smile suddenly vanishes when she sees me, and I can see Kain sucking in a breath as if preparing for me to explode. He maybe Chancellor, bestowed with the power to pass laws and the command of the central army, but he can't throw me or any High Lord in prison for making his life difficult, which I do, most of the time. Across the table from Aelia's seat, Vincent Acheron, Marcus' half brother and the current Keeper of the Southgate, catches my gaze and inclines his head slightly, acknowledging my presence. The kid is almost two-hundred years my junior and had been Marcus' protege for some time, so he treats me pretty much like an older brother. Marcus trusted him, and so far he deserves that trust, which means I have the Southgate behind me for the upcoming election. I find the kid a bit lacking in experience and motivation, but I suppose its better than having to deal with someone ambitious. This way, I have one less competitor, since Vincent isn't running for Chancellor at all.

On Kain's right hand sits my archenemy, Zach Veyron, his protege and the acting Keeper of the Northgate while he remains Chancellor. Kain sure is my number one competitor for the election, especially with the number of werewolves being on the rise to give him votes, but competition is competition, people who try to fuck with you every time an opportunity knocks is another story. Since Veyron became the acting High Lord, the prick has raised border tax on me, thrown enough of my men into prison for the slightest breach of protocol, and has tried to kill me twice. It doesn't help that he pretty much matches me in just about every aspect whether it's power, looks, or arrogance. The conniving bastard also happens to be smart, disciplined, and pretty deadly at his job. He dresses to rival me, sleeps with my women just to piss me off, and now that he's helping Kain with the election, the insufferable mutt has been digging up everything to give me bad publicity. Just one look at that shit eating grin on his face makes me want to spill blood all over that black shirt, which, I have to admit, is cut pretty much to perfection. As if that's not bad enough, he makes a point at looping an arm around Aelia's chair then whispers something in her ear that tells me they'd slept together, and probably has just arrived here pretty much hand in hand. I don't particularly care who Aelia sleeps with when she's not with me, just as long as it's not Zach who's obviously doing it to fuck with me rather than to fuck Aelia. What's worse is that I know Aelia is also sleeping with the Wolf to get back at me for that blow job I'd forced her into last month. I'm going to have to set something straight with the Witch after this and make sure she knows her boundaries, even though I'm pretty sure already does. Nobody in the realm is ignorant to the fact that Zach and I want to rip out each other's throat on a regular basis.

I slam the evening's paper on the table before I take my seat beside Vincent. On the front page shows the news of yesterday's raid Kiera has led that resulted in the confiscation of a phenomenal amount of illegal blood and thirty living supplies. One or two humans are found sometimes when we manage to intercept these trades, but thirty is a number big enough to call a High Court meeting for investigation. Nobody can move a shipment that large through a gate without authorization from one of the Keepers. I know for a fact that all of them smuggle more amount of blood supply than they're allowed to through their own gates for their secret stash and for resale to the blood market. It's to be expected especially when there's an election coming up and funds are needed for votes. But live supplies - especially at this number - are off limits, and the fact that it got into _my_ side of the territory means somebody has the nerve to try to fuck with me. It goes against my advertised policy, damages my reputation, and makes me look incompetent. Whoever brought this shit in and sent it my direction is going to pay for it and pay for it big time.

"I want to know which gate they came through and which border they used to cross into the Westwood, and I want the permit for my men to enter all three territories for investigation on my desk by tomorrow night," I lay it all out on the table at once, but they already know I'm not one who likes to stand on ceremony for these things. Ten years ago I might have tried a little harder to beat around the bush for the sake of a more peaceful meeting if only to avoid giving Marcus the headache of having to stop a fight. Now I don't see the point. Not anymore.

"For y _our_ men, Valentin?" Zach raises a brow. "Thirty live humans is a threat to the realm, not just the Westwood. It calls for central investigation, does it not, my lord Chancellor?"

Kain sits back in his chair and watches me from the corner of his eye as he replies, "It does."

"I never said otherwise," I tell them, keeping my gaze on Zach's yellow eyes to catch anything he might let slip. "Investigate, by all means, but the last time I waited for central investigation to crawl through some _very_ obvious evidence, they were too late and shit happened. I want my men on it too, unless of course, if the Chancellor is worried they'll find something on _his_ side of the wood." I wouldn't be surprised if they do. Werewolf territory is the largest and the most populated one where information is hardest to come by for the reason that they keep mostly to themselves. We work together sometimes, and while we vampires do employ a lot of them in our own territory, it's not quite true the other way around. A part of it is our own arrogance for finding it below us to work for them, but most of it comes from the fact that their bite is lethal to us, which doesn't really make one feel so safe being surrounded by that many werewolves. As for human blood, while they don't get high from it the way we do, they can still heal and regenerate tissues from the use of it, which makes it more dangerous for us if they have a lot in possession. Given how hard it is for vampires to conceive these days and how easy it is for them, not to mention the growing number of vampire's death rate with regards to blood abuse and the murders surrounding it, their population is growing too close to ours with three territories combined. It's how Kain, as a werewolf, managed to gain enough votes last time to sit in that chair. No vampires would ever vote for a werewolf, but when our votes split in three directions, they win, and they'll win again if I don't gain the support from both the Southwood and the Eastwood.

"Well, then, enlighten me." Zach meets my eyes and sneers openly, not that there is ever a need for either of us to be discreet about our hostility towards each other. "How do we know the shipment didn't come from your gate, and that you're only using this as an opportunity to investigate on something else?"

 _Because I don't let anything through my gate, you worthless piece of shit._ I check myself before giving in to the provocation I know he's throwing my way on purpose. My mood is too sour today to engage in a verbal battle without making it an actual fight five sentences later, which will end up on tomorrow's headline to _his_ advantage. Instead, I opt to simply sneer back at him, and give Aelia a quick smile. "Say what you want, but I'm not the one snooping around for information through someone else's bitch for my alpha."

Aelia snarls at me, fangs out and all, and I ignore her. I'm going to pay for that in some ways afterward, but I have more important things to worry about right now, and for how she's been behaving, that was considered mild.

Zach's yellow eyes narrow viciously at me, probably imagining sinking his fangs into my neck, before checking himself and turning to Kain. "The point is, my Lord Chancellor, that if a permit is to be given to anyone besides central investigators, it should be given to all of us to be fair. We don't know where the shipment came from, or _who_ that High Lord is working with." He glances in Vincent's direction, and the kid who always seems to be occupying his brain with something else outside the chamber doesn't seem to notice. "You either open all borders for investigation, or you open none except to central investigators, and Valentin will just have to trust us to look after our own affairs. That is my proposal."

"I agree," Aelia chimes in, smirking in my direction to make sure I feel the knife she just plunged in my back.

Kain looks at Vincent, waiting for his vote. The kid lifts his drooping eyelids and smiles a little apologetically at me. I wonder sometimes if he ever listens to half the conversation on this table. "He does have a point."

I feel a cold, cold rage going through me, directing at everybody in the room, at Kain and Veyron who's trying to turn this to their advantage, at Aelia who can't be trusted with anything but whose support I happen to need, and at Vincent who should be backing me up but doesn't seem to have enough backbone for it.

" _Trust you?_ " I say through tightly gritted teeth, my anger simmering to a boil in my chest. "Somebody in this room gave Marcus Acheron to the humans just to keep the gates opened, and so far none of you has shown the slightest intention to root out that traitor among us. Until I find out who did it and finish peeling the flesh off his or her bones and feed it to the pigs, _don't, ever again,_ ask me to trust any of the High Lord sitting here." I rise from the table before my temper gets the better of me. I've had enough of this bullshit for the night. I've had enough since I woke up that evening.

"You can keep your permits, Chancellor, but when I find out who did this - and I _will_ find out before you do - the perpetrators are mine to do with as I please, and if you interfere in any way, any way at all, I'm going to make sure everyone knows what happened to Marcus, and how you did nothing to stop it." There'll be a riot for that, and had I been more of a scumbag like the rest of them, I would have done it to make sure I win the next election. Marcus was a highly esteemed figure who'd fought for justice all his life, even for equal rights for the werewolves in our territories. Everyone loved him, and he would have won this election easily had he been alive. The media would all point a finger at Kain as to why the search and rescue mission had taken so long, why he'd kept the manner of Marcus' death a secret, and why there isn't an ongoing investigation to find out who'd betrayed him. It would be so easy for me to spread the words, but that means the case would be opened to the public, I can't do that to Marcus' family. I can't open that wound again for them after ten years of trying to forget every torture they'd put him through just to gain some advantage over an election.

I walk out of that chamber and shoot to the sky, ignoring Lucien who looks like he can use some Xanax. I need to get away from all these rotten, back-stabbing bastards before I explode and ruin everything I've worked for. As it happens, there is only one place, one person who can calm me down. I haven't given her a visit for a while because I try not to, but tonight I need a little more than comfort, I need a favor.


	12. Nostalgia

-REMUS-

The house looks exactly the same as the last time I saw it, which has to be at least a year, if not more. It takes me a moment to adjust to the light and to settle the hollowness in my stomach as memories after memories rush back to my mind. This is exactly why I've tried to avoid it, even though it used to be my refuge, my little escape from everything. 

The garden is well-tended, as always. It's full of gardenias and hydrangeas of pink and purple. At a corner, under an arch packed full of jasmine is a small table and four cushioned outdoor chairs. They're kept in pristine condition, even though only one person probably sits there these days. It used to be his favorite spot for tea, which also smelled like jasmine just because she likes it. She likes all kinds of white flowers really, even more so now, because it reminds her of his wings - the wings I'd kept in my estate and never told her about. I don't know how to tell her about that part of the story. I don't ever want her to ever have to imagine him without them.

"What did you do this time?"

I turn around to look at Amelia and smile at what I found. She appears in her worn-out jeans and an old tank top, covered by an apron stained thoroughly with everything from paint to coffee. Her bright red curls are gathered into a loose bun that looks like she had one free hand to hold it up, and on her forehead, I can see a stain of white paint exactly at the spot where I usually find it. She smells like turpentine, as always. Amelia is an artist, and I'm happy to see she's still painting.

"Why do you think I've done something?" I scowl at her openly.

She puts her hands on her hips and raises a brow. "When have you ever visited us unless you've done something irreversible?"

 _Us,_ she said, as if he might appear any minute from that door behind her to call me inside. I release a sigh. "Remind me to never argue with you." It's true, actually. I tended to call on them only when I'm in trouble, but only because I didn't want to intrude.

She beams her usual, brilliant smile at me as she gives me a big hug. "It's good to see you, Remus. It's been a while."

"I've been busy." It's a lie. I can always make time to come here. I just have been avoiding it.

"Come inside. I just made some tea."

As always, she never gives me a chance to say no, and I never have the heart to stop her mid-sentence. Staring at the doormat, I hold my breath for a moment before I step inside and will myself to look up like nothing in there is going to affect me.

It does though. It always does.

The living room is full of him. The bright vermillion armchair he liked to sit on is still there, along with the white alpaca throw that always smells like him. Amelia now drinks from his favorite mug that I gave him the first time we all spent Christmas together at Amelia's request. It now sits on the coffee table, and on her finger is the emerald ring he used to wear. But all this I have come to live with and get used to every time I visit her. It's what I see on the wall behind the console table that really bothers me.

From across the room, Marcus stares at me with his green eyes, his golden, luxurious curls shining in the light that floods through the window from behind, creating an aura-like yellow glow around his figure. Behind him, a pair of feathery white, majestic wings rise just above his head, curving in a little over his broad shoulders. He looks heartbreakingly beautiful, like an angel, or something else sent from heaven.

The painting has been there for more than a hundred years, and every time I see it, my heart skips a beat. I can understand why Amelia has painted him that way, and Marcus used to tease about me having fallen in love with him every time he saw me staring speechlessly at it. I don't think I'd ever told him the real reason why. I don't think he knew that's what I thought he'd looked like when he'd found me in the stable, hiding from my father. I know for a fact that he didn't know I think of him as my savior, and now that he's gone I'm left hanging by a thin, thin line that keeps me from becoming the monster I've been afraid of.

And seeing him again, in that painting, staring at me with the same expression that had saved me from falling time after time since we'd known each other, always shatter something inside me to pieces.

"Remus." Amelia places a hand on my shoulder, and I realize then that I must be standing there looking like I'm about to cry. "It's time to move on."

"I _am_ moving on," I tell her. I've gotten out of that hell, out of addiction, haven't I? I'm back working like a horse, and even running for Chancellor. My life is normal again, isn't it?

"No." She shakes her head and looks at me as if I'm a lost little boy. "You're moving around dragging his corpse with you, leaving a mess everywhere you go," Amelia says then chuckles softly. "You can't do that, you know? He's too pretty a corpse for you to drag around."

I let myself smile at that. He _is_ too pretty a corpse for me to drag around, that's why I haven't had the heart to expose the manner of his death to the public. I want the memory of him untainted by the rotting ugliness of our world, and here I am soiling his legacy by dragging him with me, not letting go.

I turn to Amelia and marvel at how peaceful she looks. Her expression is so soft and calm, and there's nothing but love in her eyes. She's managed to completely move on without letting go of a single thing that holds the memory of him when all I've been able to do is to run away because I can't bear being reminded of what I've lost.

"How do you do it?" I have to ask.

"How do I do what?"

"Live," I say gesturing to everything in the room, "like this." _Like he's still here. Like he isn't gone._ Where does she find such strength? Marcus was her husband, her companion, the love of her life. Even if she hadn't known him for nearly as long as I had, there were things between them that didn't exist between Marcus and me. Amelia knows him in ways that I don't. She would have seen the faces of him that would have been foreign to me, would have felt his presence in ways that I can never begin to imagine. How do you love and surrender yourself so completely, so intimately, to someone and still live so calmly when that person is gone?

She smiles gently at me, then turns back to the painting. "I guess there's still a large part of me that's very human," she says, her complexion seems to glow in the mild sunlight that comes through the room. I realize then that she's left the curtains opened on purpose, even though the sun must bother her to a certain degree, being a turned vampire, not an oldblood like us. "We are made to endure a short life and the deaths of our loved ones from the very beginning. We live, always, with an expectation that one day everything will come to an end. I think we're prepared for it, in ways that you never have to."

' _They're a lot tougher than you think,'_ Marcus used to say every time I pointed out how weak humans are, and I'd never been convinced. Now, I look at Amelia's small figure, at how she stands in front of Marcus' painting without a shred of regret and I can feel it. She's a vampire now, but she was human. It must have taken a phenomenal amount of strength to love someone knowing one day you'll lose all of it, even more so, to live every single day counting down towards an inevitable death and still have the will to make the most out of life. It must be like swimming in an ocean without a shore, knowing you'll eventually drown but still never give up. I can't help but feel how ironic it is, that I'm one of the most powerful vampires in the realm, and yet here, standing next to her, I feel so pathetically small.

"That means something else too, doesn't it?" I say, smiling at my own pitiful state. "I may never be able to let go."

"It's not easy," she replies, heading over to pour more tea into Marcus' favorite mug and hands it over to me. "But you don't have to let go of a single thing, Remus," she closes her hands around mine, holding them tight against the heated surface of the mug. "You can hold on to it, and feel only the warmth it gives. You can choose to live with the memory, instead of the loss. You make his life more important than his death. That's how we survive, as humans."

I suppose it makes sense, and I can't help but admire her strength to be able to do it. "He always said you're wise beyond your years," I tell her with a sigh, "and I never believed him."

She smirks at that. "Oh, but you did. That's why you come here whenever you need a pat on the back."

I wince a little at how much she can see through me. "I'm going to need a little more than a pat on the back this time, Amelia."

"Of course, you do." She disappears into the kitchen for a few seconds and returns with another mug in her hand, then she takes a seat on Marcus' armchair and gestures for me to do the same on the couch. I wonder sometimes if she realizes that she's the only woman who can order me around, and I have a feeling the answer is 'yes.'

"You can't rehome thirty humans without my help."

I blink at that. "You knew?"

"Lucian told me," she says, leaning back in her chair as if there's absolutely nothing out of the ordinary with that statement.

"Lucien comes _here_?" I raise my voice a little. The house is my refuge, my personal space, a place Marcus and I have made sure only a handful of people know about it to keep her safe. It's not that I don't trust Lucien that I haven't told him about it, even though I have an inkling that he'd always known where I went when I disappeared, but for him to have actually paid her a visit feels like he's crossed a line.

"He's been coming here for the past fifty years," she replies with a chuckle. "How do you think Marcus knew in advance _every_ time you messed up something?"

"But he didn't ...." I swallow down the rest of my words when something suddenly occurs to me. "He did, didn't he?" That's why he was always here, waiting for me in that chair with a pot of tea already brewing when I arrived, just like...this.

I bury my face in my palm and squeeze the bridge of my nose. I'm going to have to sit down and have a big talk with Lucien after this.

"Before you give him a hard time, you should know that it was Marcus who'd asked Lucien to give him reports on everything you do. As for Lucien, he knows you trusted Marcus implicitly, and Marcus trusted me, so it's a matter of logical deduction that he comes here to tell me these things. He didn't do anything wrong, unless, of course, if you want to defy the rules of simple mathematics or you're lacking education."

 _'Don't,'_ Marcus used to say, _'even think about arguing with Amelia because you're never going to win.'_ He's right, and I'm not even going to try. I let out a sigh of utter defeat. "How would you like this handled?"

"I assume their memories have been wiped clean?"

"Yes." That's what they do before they ship them to us, to lessen the degree of resistance and escape attempts. People are easier to control when they don't remember a thing or that they have someone to go back to. It also means none of them to know who they are or where they live, which creates a pretty big problem in terms of releasing them back into society. Amelia finds out what she can about them discreetly, makes a match with the missing people profile she has on hand and send them home with some made up stories. It's a highly delicate work that my people don't do very well, especially not with that kind of number.

"If you don't mind, you can send them to your training facility, ask Rae to take care of them for a while and send me their profiles. I'll take care of the rest."

I give her a nod. Amelia and Marcus had their own network that's larger and older than mine to deal with blood smuggling and human trafficking. They'd been working on it long before I did. I'd given him aid whenever he'd asked, but I had never been directly involved, not until he'd been kidnapped and killed. A part of me will never get over the fact that I hadn't been more active in helping him root out these organizations, and Marcus had never expected me to do anything just because he was my friend, not even when I'd owed him a lot of things. Even now that I've offered my network for her to utilize freely, she usually doesn't ask for anything more than information. It's the first time she's asked to use my facility to hold these victims and keep them safe, which makes me wonder if she is having an issue with her own, now that Marcus is gone. "Thank you," I tell her. "Is everything all right?"

She looks at me in the way that tells me she fully understands my question and simply smiles. "Nothing I can't handle," she says, sipping more of her tea. "The real question is, how are _you_ handling your bond with Veronica?"

I choke on the damn tea at the end of that sentence, contemplating inwardly whether I should kill Lucien for slipping that piece of information and giving Amelia the opportunity to smile so smugly at me right now. I did give Marcus a hard time when he'd sired Amelia, and for some reasons, I suddenly feel like that painting of his is grinning smugly at me from across the room. The fact that Amelia knows even her name makes me want to teleport out of that house immediately, but that would just make it worse.

Then I remember that she might be the only one who's been sired by a pureblood, which means that Marcus must have suffered pretty much the same symptoms I have. I've completely forgotten it due to the fact that we've been selling lies about him having found her already a vampire for almost a century for safety purposes, but I suppose Lucien knows the truth too, otherwise he wouldn't have mentioned it to her. It doesn't really matter now since Marcus is no longer around for anyone to use her against him. "How did _he_ handle it?"

"The same way you just did."

"What?" I snort at the image in my head of Marcus losing his cool. "Choked on his tea?"

"Sucked in a breath and emitted enough testosterone to knock out a skunk whenever I walked into the room." She chuckles and adds, "Which you just did at the mention of her name."

 _I am so going to kill Lucien for this._ I swear inwardly at my seneschal and refuse to comment on it, even though, yes, I admit that I tend to grow suddenly hard at the mention of her name. It also doesn't help that she constantly tugs on my bond a few times a day, as if to test my patience, which, to my satisfaction, has yet to fail me so far. I've managed to succeed at keeping my distance for the past three weeks, despite the images she's daringly sent down the bond to lure me into drinking her blood, among other things. It does make me wonder...

"How much did you feel him after the bond was completed?"

Amelia smiles wickedly. "I felt everything, as in there was no more hiding how many times a day he was turned on for just looking at me," she says, and then her expression softens. "But I also felt every emotion he was trying to hide. His sadness, his fears, his every regret was exposed to me. I think that made it impossible for me not to love him. It's almost as if we became an inseparable part of each other. The intimacy of sharing all your feelings with someone can be quite frightening if you don't trust each other." She pauses a little to study my reaction, which must be pretty disturbing for her to check herself.

"But all that happened after he'd sired me," she continues. "Marcus didn't drink a single drop of my blood until I asked him to turn me, and by then we were already in an intimate relationship. I would imagine the effects to be less for just drinking her blood if you ever lose it."

 _If I ever lose it_. I almost shudder at the thought. That's something I can't allow to happen. "Still, I'd better not," I say, more like a promise to myself than to her, really. "Not with the election coming up."

A frown replaces her smile at the mention of the word election, and I suddenly remember how much she stands against it. "You don't have to do this."

"You know I have to."

"This isn't your dream to chase, Remus," she shakes her head at me, even though she knows it never works. "I've already lost him. I don't want to lose you too."

I can see where she's coming from. It had always been an issue they'd argued about - the only issue, as a matter of fact. His dream was too dangerous, too big, too demanding of him that it had frightened her to tears sometimes, and in the end, it did kill him. But I'm not like Marcus. I'm not as kind, or generous, or trusting of people, and I don't have a wife waiting for me to come home to. I had only one thing to lose, and I've already lost it. "Now you're the one holding on," I opt to tease her instead. She wouldn't understand it in any case. No one does.

Amelia closes her eyes and sighs. "Of course, I am, Remus." When she opens them again, all I see is Marcus' worried gaze looking in my direction. "You're the one person he treasured the most, perhaps even more than me."


	13. An Absence Once Occupied

The air feels heavy in my lungs. It always does whenever I'm standing here, reading those words. 

_'The love of my life. My husband. My savior. My friend. The brightest star in the sky that ever was and ever will be.'_

The anonymous tombstone looks as good as new. Its white marble shows signs of having been recently polished and the words repainted in gold. At the horizon, the setting sun fills the sky with hues of purple, orange, and red against the bright blue backdrop and the thick, white clouds overhead. It spills onto the tombstone, rendering it slightly pink, like the color of his wings when he'd stretched them out in the sun just before it set. Marcus loved those hours. He used to fly out to places where he could be alone, to watch the day bleed into nightfall, painting the sky blood-red as it did.

 _Where we could be alone_ , I correct myself. I was the only one he'd ever brought along with him. I'd always been the only one he'd confided with during those hours when he needed to. He would tell me his dreams, his fears, his ambitions, the girls he had his eyes on, the boys who'd gotten on his nerves. All the while I would sit there listening to him talk about these things I knew he would never tell anyone else. Marcus was a warm, friendly person to those who knew him, but he'd never let anyone see his weakness or his scars but me.

_'You're the one person he treasured the most, perhaps even more than me.'_

There was a hint of bitterness in those words, and I have a feeling there were things he'd told me but not Amelia. I suppose any man would keep some of his weaknesses from his wife, to make sure she feels safe and protected. With me, however, Marcus had always laid his heart bare, and by the time I'd left the Southwood, we were beyond keeping secrets from each other. I suppose when you've spent every hour of your hundred-year childhood growing up with someone, there's not much left for you to hide. Marcus knew my every dirty little secret and all the shameful things in my life, and I knew all of his.

I _was_ the one thing he'd treasured the most. I know it as well as Amelia, without needing to be told. They say it's a mother's job to treasure her child above all else - a mother I didn't have. It's an absence in my life that Marcus had occupied for almost three hundred years. An occupation that has now disappeared into thin air all at once, leaving a hole so large in my existence that I have no idea how to fill again.

"You fucking bastard," I swear as I cover my eyes and the tears that begin to pool in them. I want him to hear it. I want to grab his collar and shake him and yell at him for having taken up space in every inch, every corner of my life and then leaving me here.

"You are the only one I know who swears at a dead person."

I suck in a breath at that voice and blink away the wetness in my eyes before I turn to look. There, ten discreet steps from me, Veronica stands in her black leather pants and jacket, holding what looks like dried up flowers and some torn, dirty ribbons in her hand. I curse myself inwardly at how far I'd let my guard down for her to sneak up on me unaware, but then I also remember who she is. She's been trained for this and has succeeded in capturing too many vampires than a single human should have been able to.

"What are you doing here?" I frown openly at her. She's the last person I expect to see anywhere near Marcus' grave, and also the last person I want to see given my mood right now.

"That's my question," she snaps angrily at me. "What's a vampire doing in the middle of a human's cemetery?"

If she thinks I'm going to explain myself to her, she has another thing coming. "It's none of your business," I tell her, turning away as I speak, getting ready to teleport out of there before she tugs on the bond and ruins my mood even further. I don't have the patience to play her games today. Definitely not right now.

And she does tug on it, but with something else I didn't expect. Something close to regret, perhaps even an apology.

"You're not the only one who's lost somebody, you know," she says, looking out into the horizon where the sun is about to disappear behind the hill. "Today is the tenth anniversary of my family's death. If you feel I've intruded, it wasn't intentional." A gush of wind blows towards us from behind, and she reaches a hand to tug back a loose strand of her golden brown hair behind her ear. I wonder sometimes if she likes having her ponytail a bit loose, or if she simply can't bother to tie it up neatly.

"There's a bunch of kids heading this way," she says. "I thought you might appreciate the warning."

I turn to the direction of the sound I've just heard - the sound I should have heard a long time ago but didn't. They would have surprised me if she hadn't interrupted my thoughts. Have I been so out of my elements just now that I didn't hear a single thing in my surroundings?

The grimace on my face must have been pretty forward because Veronica stops tugging on my bond immediately and makes a move to turn away. "You don't have to go," she says, more politely than meaning to spite. "I'm leaving anyway."

I realize then that she's been meaning to save me from being exposed to those kids, as opposed to trying to taunt me with whatever she's seen of my vulnerability just now. Through the bond, I can sense the melancholy in her mood today, mixed with an unnerving amount of anger, pain, and most of all, regrets.

_The way I'm feeling now._

It suddenly occurs to me, that perhaps it's not only my emotions that I've been feeling. Maybe a lot of what made me dream about Marcus, what made me so angry at the meeting, and what made me decide to come here was because I felt her emotions through the bond. I look at her, and the way she answers my gaze with her direct, unwavering brown eyes makes something crystal clear to me.

We share an understanding in this, if nothing else, with or without my blood running in her veins. We share a loss that takes away all the possibilities of moving on or of letting go, which is why I'm doing this, why she's standing here, talking to me when we should have never met at all.

I draw a breath to the tightness in my chest, to the invisible hand that's closing forcefully around my heart, as an awareness hits me and hits me hard it nearly knocks me off my feet.

An awareness, that if there is a person alive who might come close to understanding how I feel, it's Veronica.


	14. Walk Me Home

\- VERONICA -

It's frightening, for lack of a better word. The air seems to have petrified in my lungs as I stand there, nailed to the ground by the ghostly glow of his silver-grey eyes. He looks at me as if he can see everything in my head as if he's sitting in my heart taking notes of every passing of my emotions. There's a connection that I can't deny or shake loose, a bond pulling me in so tightly that I can almost see it. The real problem is that I know he feels it too, and that's what frightens me. I can't have this kind of connection between us. Not with him. Not with what I'm planning to do.

It's all my fault. I should have left him there and walk away without saying a word. What do I care if some kids catch him crying? It should have been satisfying to me to see him at his most vulnerable state. I should have humiliated him to my heart's content for what he's done to me. But I guess I'm not the cold-hearted bitch that I believed I am, and something I don't understand made me stop. Perhaps there's a part of me that understands what he's going through, and I would have hated to have some kids barge into my personal space like that. So now I'm standing here in front of my enemy, my heart twisting into a knot, as I try to figure out what to do with this part of him I've just discovered. The part of him that is too unnervingly similar to who and what I am now.

He turns to me half way, slipping his hands in the pockets of his long dark-grey overcoat. "You don't come here very often, do you?" He asks, his voice uncharacteristically soft and low, almost like he's speaking under his breath like he's been stunned by something and is still finding it difficult to breathe.

"Neither do you," I tell him. It's not hard to see. There are those who'd moved on that comes here often to speak to their loved ones, telling them things, talking as if someone is listening actively on the other side. Then there are those who stare at the tombstone like it's some kind of parasite, a cursed, wretched object that should never exist. People who never let go. People like me - like us. That recognition brings down something inside me and leaves me wide open. That's what frightens me.

He sucks in a breath, and I realize he must have felt it too. From the distance, Remus is staring at me like he's seeing me for the first time like I've just materialized in front of his eyes, and deep down I can't help but feel the same. We're two different beings, standing on what feels like the opposite side of the world, and yet it's as if I'm looking in the mirror, seeing a reflection of me overlapping on the image of him.

The phone buzzes in my pocket, and I almost jolt in alarm before fishing it out to look at the message. Chris just texted me to let me know he's arrived. I switch the app and open the door for him with my phone. It's what I do these days, despite how ridiculous it sounds. I let vampires into my house when I'm not home.

"I have to go," I tell him, putting the phone back in my pocket. "Chris and Rae are waiting for me at the cabin."

Remus releases a breath and looks over his shoulder at the horizon. The sun is completely gone, leaving only a faint glow above the hill. "Where are you parked?"

I give him a shrug. "I didn't drive here." I've always preferred walking to their graves. It gives me time to reflect on things, and I'm usually not focused enough to drive safely home.

"It's a long walk." He frowns. "And it's getting dark."

I want to ask him why he suddenly worries about my safety, but I figure the answer will be somewhere along the line of not wanting to lose his precious bait, and I don't feel like hearing it at the moment. "I can take care of myself."

He snorts at that. "Until you fail."

I cross my arms over my chest and grin knowingly at him. I know what he's doing. He's not the only man I've ever had to deal with. "You know, you don't have to come up with excuses to walk me home. It's all within your right to protect your investment," I tell him as I start walking back, "or should I say your pawn?"

He turns and follows at my heel, keeping an almost measured two steps behind. I almost forget how well mannered he is. "I never walk anyone home," he says with a chuckle. "I usually send Lucien."

"Except he wants to kill me."

Remus laughs a little, and I realize it might be the first time I've seen him so relaxed. "Lucien wants to kill everybody who gets too close to me or poses a threat. I wouldn't take it personally. But yes, he wants to kill you."

I figured out that much from their interactions. I also figured that Remus is enjoying that fact a little too much. "You're using me to piss him off right now, aren't you?" I can't help but feel amused at that thought. I never liked the way Lucien looked at me, even if we rarely ran into each other, and the idea of pissing him off by any means pleases me.

He returns even a wider grin than mine. "As it happens, I have several reasons to piss him off today."

As I open my mouth to respond, he grabs me by my upper arm and steers me a little over to the side. I look down and realize he's just saved my favorite pair of boots from stepping into a pretty deep puddle, and figure I should at least thank him. But Remus is already looking ahead, as if he's already forgotten about it, or that it was something he does on a regular basis, like a reflex, and without thinking. The one thing I notice about Remus Valentin is that while he can be such an arrogant pain in the ass sometimes, he's never pretentious around me. For someone so high up on the food chain, he wears his emotions pretty much on his sleeves, and I can see it so clearly now as he escorts me home, that he's enjoying the walk immensely, and not in the way that tells me he has other motives in mind like the other guys I've walked with. He's strolling at a slow pace, looking at the birds, the trees, the stars overhead, paying attention to anything but the fact that I'm his company. I should be more careful of him, more suspicious of everything he does, but that night I can't bring myself to. It's been a while since someone walks me home, and while he's a vampire, a highly dangerous one at that, he has no reason to harm me, not right now anyway.

We arrive at my front porch half an hour later without saying another word after that. It was a peaceful, quiet walk and I suppose both of us needed it after that visit to the cemetery. I unlock the door and step inside, heading straight to the kitchen where I know Chris and Rae would be waiting. That's where they like to wait for me, mostly because they're always raiding my fridge.

 _My kitchen is full of vampires,_ I frown as I step in. Chris is standing by the window, arms wrapped tightly across his chest, looking absentmindedly at the woods outside. Rae is sitting at one end of the dining table, sipping her tea with her feet stretched out on the tabletop, and on the opposite end, I find Lucian, here, for the first time since I had him in my attic, doing the same thing, just without his feet up.

They look up in my direction when I enter, and then their gazes stop dead at Remus who walked in a few seconds later and is now leaning on the doorframe behind me, looking as if he's done this every day and the fact that he's just arrived with me is nothing out of the ordinary whatsoever.

It's like seeing a high commander walk into a room full of privates. Chris straightened abruptly, almost spilling the content of his cup, while Rae immediately puts her feet down and shoots up from her seat to vacate it for him, apologizing as she does. Lucien, calmer and a lot more graceful than the rest, stand up to greet him with the most practiced, elegant bow I've ever seen in my life given how slight the gesture is.

Behind me, Remus doesn't even stir. He simply walks forward and takes over Rae's seat, waves a hand as if to say, 'at ease,' and leans back on the chair.

It was pretty much useless. I don't think anyone was remotely at ease as they wait for Lucien to pour him a cup of tea and delivers it to his hand before heading back to his seat. I look around the kitchen again and I realize they're sitting in order of rank, and suddenly my cabin feels like an uptight, official headquarter of some military unit.

I look at Remus who appears exactly the same man who'd just walked me home, showing not the slightest change of attitude, and it dawns on me, that this is how it is around him every day, and that he's used to it, to the point that he doesn't feel the suffocating tension in the room right now. I can now see why he enjoyed that walk. I would enjoy it too if everyone acts so constipated around me.

This, however, is my house, and I'm not going to allow anyone to suffocate me in my kitchen.

"Remind me," I say as I take at the seat next to Remus, dragging the chair back far enough to prop my feet comfortably on the table, in front of his face, "to put him in the attic the next time he visits."

Rae nearly chokes on her tea, and her eyes look like they're about to pop out of their sockets. Chris, to my delight, tries to stifle a laugh. Lucien, however, is glaring at me hard enough to burn a hole in my forehead. I enjoy that last bit the most.

"What the hell did I do?" Remus blinks at me.

"You're making everyone uncomfortable," I tell him and cut him off before he can open his mouth to protest. "What do you have for me, Chris?"

Chris gives me a painful smile, before bringing out his notebook computer and places it on the table. "Well, I found out who that guy is," he says, typing something into the computer and then turns it over for me to see, which is in the same direction where Remus is sitting.

The screen shows me a page with a big blue 'W' on the top, and a rather good picture of the guy who's been actively hitting on me at the same bar I went to in the past two weeks, despite the fact that I was obviously occupied with someone Chris had sent to accompany me. The fact that he's always surrounded by superhero-size bodyguards and how bold he was when he'd approached me puts Chris on pretty high alert. I read the name under the picture and something about it tugs hard on my memory.

"Damien Wesley," Chris explains, eyeing Remus as he does. "Son and only heir to William Wesley, CEO of Wesley Corporations, the parent company of Prime Real Estates, Crown holdings, Summit Hospitality, Orion hotels and resorts, and the list goes on and on. The guy owns half the companies on this side of the continent and more on others. Business-wise, he's well connected with everybody from senators to drug lords. Long story short, nothing happens around here without some money going into his pockets or without his blessing. I think you've just hit the jackpot, to be honest."

It appears that I have. "So you're saying that whoever's running the syndicate has to either pay him or ask for permission?"

Chris grins widely at that. "If it's not Wesley himself that's running it, yes."

This might be the easiest and quickest way to root out the syndicate. If I can get the son to take me to his home where his father operates, I should be able to grab a lot of information that will lead to the source of this blood business. Seeing that for the past three weeks we've gotten no closer to finding out the connection between all the middlemen, this is considered either pure luck or a gift from God.

"Looks like I'm going to need a change of outfit if you want me to hook a fish that big," I say, chuckling at Chris.

"You're going to need a lot more than that." From across the table, Lucien speaks for the first time, his tone light and laced with something incredibly toxic. He puts his mug down, leans back on his chair, then looks at me from head to toe as if I'm some kind of an insect crawling on his food. "Do you know how to hook a fish that big, Miss Wolf?"

It takes all my effort to not walk over there and bust his teeth in, but I'm not going to rise to the occasion and give him the satisfaction of being able to rile me up that easily.

"No, do you?" I ask, holding his gaze as I offer him the same look he's giving me. "Because if you've somehow managed to sleep your way to the top, I'd sure like to learn a few things."

From across the table, Rae is trying hard not to laugh, and I realize then that this might be the first time someone has the nerve to speak to him that way. Chris, on the other hand, and to my surprise, remains focused on the screen of his computer. He hasn't looked at Lucien even once since I've walked in here or say a single word to him, now that I think about it.

Remus clears his throat before Lucien could respond, and I suddenly remember what my words implied the other way around.

"I think I can vouch for his innocence on that issue," Remus says with a chuckle. "Lucien, that is enough," he adds, not with any hint of humor this time. "Chris, continue."

Chris nods politely and brings out a black and gold envelope that looks like an invitation of some kind. "There is a ball for the opening of his father's new hotel next Friday. Everyone important will be there. Since he doesn't know who you are yet, I'm thinking of giving you a new identity for you to appear at the ball and reintroduce yourself properly to Damien. If you want to be included in the inner circle and get yourself invited into their homes, you're going to have to appear as one of them."

He's right. It's a great opportunity not only to get information from the Wesleys, but also to observe his acquaintance at a social gathering. It does, as Chris says, require men to appear as someone who belongs in that circle. Damien isn't going bring home a prostitute he's met at some bar. That takes a lot of preparation. "It's five days away." I grimace as I think about it.

"I know." Chris sighs heavily. "We're going to have to set everything up pretty fast. Do you think you'll be ready by then?"

Now I see the problem, and I can't help but feel that Lucien has a point, despite my itch to slam his head into the wall. I'm as far from being an upper class, pampered daughter of some billionaire as a toad is to a bird. I don't think I would know which fork I'm supposed to use first if they present me with ten or however many these people think they need to use, and I'd probably end up humiliating myself by spilling soup on my dress or something similar before the end of the night. Moreover, I look around the room and I don't see anyone here who might have the slightest idea how I should behave in that circle. Well, maybe Lucien, but we'd probably end up killing each other with the fork before he finishes teaching me how to hold it. On top of it all, I have less than a week. I have to appear well-bred and blue-blooded enough to convince him I'm worthy of bringing home, as opposed to a hotel somewhere or simply its bathroom. There's no way I'll be ready in time to do this even if someone can teach me how. Not by myself anyway. The more I think about it, the more I believe I should just give up and tell Chris to find another solution.

I open my mouth to say exactly that, but my eyes catch the sight of Lucien who's sitting there smirking at me triumphantly from across the table, knowing that he's right, and that's the end of the conversation.

 _Fuck it,_ I swear furiously in my head and turn, without thinking or allowing myself one second of hesitation, towards Remus Valentin whose fault it is entirely that I'm being put into this situation.

"You're coming with me."


	15. The Bigger Fish

\- VERONICA -

"Sit up straight and take your elbow off the table," Remus scowls, his voice cracking at me like a whip.

I draw a long breath and hold back the urge to stick a knife into his eye for the tenth time that evening. Then I do what he says. I pull back my shoulders and straighten my spine, tucking my elbows neatly to my sides like I'm trying to keep something from falling out of my armpits. When I find out whose wretched ancestors had invented these useless upper-class etiquettes, I swear I'm going make every one of their descendants pay for it with their teeth and see if they can suck in their soups without making a sound. The whole charade of trying to make oneself look good for the satisfaction of a complete stranger is not only degrading, it insults my self-esteem, and devalues my self-worth as a person. I mean really, trying to do this at all is like supporting the idea that people who know how to hold a fork a certain way are better, more superior human beings when half the world's population doesn't even use the damn thing. We deserve to be eaten alive by vampires. We really do.

"You are contemplating whether to stick that knife into my eye, aren't you?" Remus grins at me from the other side of the table. He is obviously enjoying this a little too much. "You know you could have said no."

I plunge the fork into the chicken on my plate, imagining it was Lucien that I'd just stabbed in the throat with my utensil, and put the whole chunk of it in my mouth.

Remus winces as he looks at me chew it with a vengeance. "Oh for God's sake, Veronica. You look like a hamster. That chicken needs to be cut into at least three pieces before you stuff it into your mouth. If I hadn't known better I'd think you were raised by hyenas!"

I open my mouth to tell him to make up his mind and pick an animal to insult me with, because that logic doesn't work, and he holds up a finger in front of my face to stop me from speaking with my mouth full, to which I obeyed. That's a basic manner I can understand, but what's so wrong with putting your elbow on the table anyway? That, I'd like to know and so far nobody has been able to give me an explanation worth the education I've had.

It's all my fault, really. My ego has gotten the best of me. The moment I tell Remus to accompany me to the gala, he rose to the occasion and said that if he's going to be my escort then I'm going to need to be trained enough to not embarrass him. I wanted to give him a mouthful of how much of an arrogant prick I thought he was, but with Lucien sitting there waiting for me to prove myself unworthy of His Royal Highness' attention, I had no choice but to take the challenge. So here I am, following a strict training schedule for the next five days which includes taking ballroom dancing lessons, memorizing every last name that matters in the upper-class circle, and dining with Remus every night in his penthouse in the city for him to fix what he calls my 'Neanderthalic' manners.

The penthouse, I'm happy to say, might be the only good thing that's come out of this mess I've foolishly put myself into. The monstrous apartment he keeps on my side of the realm is a five -bedroom, rooftop living space with its own pool and a private garden big enough to hold a party of fifty quite comfortably. It sits on the top of a 120th-floor building, with floor-to-ceiling glass panels in every room that offer a 360 degrees, bird's eye view of the city below. The kitchen alone is probably bigger than my whole cabin, and I doubt he ever touches a single appliance. From what I know, Remus doesn't even come here. He just keeps it for when he has to be here, like those billionaires who keep an apartment everywhere just to find a place to put away their mistresses.

Since I've been given a new identity as a daughter of some made up guy who owns an oil company, Chris has suggested that I move into this apartment, in case Damien ever sends someone to follow me home. So I've been living here for the past two days and nights, getting the entire apartment to myself safe for when Remus arrives for my daily table etiquette lesson, from which he heads out at the end of every meal, never staying past nine. My ballroom dancing lesson is also conducted here with a private trainer Chris had found. I have a cook and a team of cleaners who come every day now to make sure I'm comfortable. For everything I'm getting, I should say I'm having a blast. It's only during these sessions with Remus, that I find it a form of torture no luxury can possibly alleviate.

" _You_ could have said no." I glare at him when I finally finished chewing my food and respond. If he'd done that, then I wouldn't be stuck in this situation, would I?

"And miss seeing you eat like a primate? I wouldn't trade it for the world." He chuckles. "You have sauce on your mouth, by the way," he adds, pointing at the left side of his mouth to show me.

That's the third animal he's associated with me tonight, but I guess he's sort of right on this one. I release a sigh of pure defeat as I dab the corner of my mouth with the napkin. Maybe I _have_ been raised by hyenas after all. Well, compared to Remus at least, I must be.

I look at him slice the chicken with the grace and thoughtfulness of a Michelin-star chef before putting it in his mouth. Now that I'm forced to learn these things I realize his manner is more than spotless. He moves with such natural elegance in everything he does, sits always with his back incredibly straight, his shoulders are pulled back all the time like Captain America when he walks, and there's always an air of princeliness around him that's impossible to ignore. You can snap a picture of Remus Valentin at anytime and it'll be good enough for a centerfold in GQ magazine.

"You know, you should be the one trying to seduce Damien." It might take a lot less time and effort, truly. "Or his father," I add. "I would imagine you're hot enough to turn any man gay if you try."

He stares at me in disbelief for a moment, and then he begins to laugh, really laugh.

"What's so funny?" I scowl at him.

"Nothing." He shakes his head and gives me a smile that I might have considered cute had he not shoved his blood down my throat. Okay, he didn't exactly do that, but the difference is minuscule, in my opinion.

"You can't just laugh at me and tell me it's nothing. That's rude."

"I was just thinking," he picks up the wine glass and swirls the content, sniffing it while keeping his eyes on me, "that it's the first time I've met a woman whose one and only reaction to finding me hot is to pair me with another man. I don't know if I should find it flattering or insulting, to be honest."

I scrunch my nose at that. "How is that insulting?"

He leans back on the chair and leers at me. "The fact that you've removed yourself from the picture completely, of course."

From under the table, his foot brushes the side of my calf as he raises one leg to cross over the other, and I jump a little at the contact. Then I remember how I did the exact same thing to him the other night in my bathroom, and I draw the conclusion from the way he's grinning so smugly right now that this is how he's paying me back for it. As much as I'm willing to admit that it's working quite a bit, I'm not the kind of girl who enjoys being on the receiving end of such an advance, not without leaving my own mark in return. I'm the hunter, not the hunted, that much I need to make clear.

I pick up my wine glass and mimic his grin. "How do you know I wasn't imagining spreading you out on this table naked and licking you all over?"

He snorts at that, even though I can see a flicker of desire in the way he looks at me, regardless of how hard he's trying not to show it. "Because you weren't."

"No?" I send that exact image down the bond.

Remus stiffens and then smiles at me, sucking in a long, agonizing breath and makes sure I notice it. "You keep doing that," he says, dragging a thumb down the stem of his wine glass and back up again as if it were something else he's touching, "and we'll never finish this dinner."

I return the smile, leaning forward on the table and resting my cheek on my knuckles, angling my neck to offer him an unobstructed view of my naked throat. "I'm not in a hurry." I know he's attracted to me, and I'm guessing it has to do with the bond, coupled with the danger of it. For all his efforts to hold back, Remus is still a man and I'm pretty sure he's bound to lose it sometimes. I just need him to drink my blood, just one drop of it and I'll have the leverage I need.

He puts his glass on the table and slides his hand slowly down the stem, then spreads his palm on the tablecloth. The way he rubs his fingers on the white linen as he fixes his attention on me tells me he's giving it consideration. I hold my breath as Remus continues to leer at me from across the table, stripping me down to my bra with his eyes, his fingers digging into the fabric the same way they once did on my leg that night. I can still feel the forcefulness of that grip, the roughness of those fingers as they traveled up my thigh, how they dug into my skin hard enough to give me a bruise. It scares me sometimes when I think about what I'm doing. I'm luring a beast out of its den, and I have a feeling he's going to tear me to pieces when he finally decides to pounce.

"Tell me something, Veronica." He leans over but keeps his hand where they are, and I find myself swallowing at the scent of his aftershave that reaches my nose. "How exactly are you planning to do this?" He asks, trailing his eyes down my nose to pause at my mouth. "Are you going to bite your lip when I taste it or are you going to cut yourself and smear your blood all over me when I fuck you?"

I resist the urge to bite my lip at that. He's one step ahead of me, as always, but that is what makes it a challenge I can't resist, on top of the obvious need I have to bind him to me. "What does it matter?" I ask, tilting my head further back to expose the nape of my neck and the veins in it. "Either way, you're going to end up licking it off me."

"Perhaps." He gives me a grin that makes me grip the edge of my seat. "Or I can tie you up and make sure you can do neither until I'm done fucking you. Your elbow," he says, flicking his eyes down to my arm, "is on the table."

And just like that, he draws back and continues eating as if nothing had happened. I know then that I've lost this game. Remus is too disciplined for what I'm trying to do, or what he has to lose is too valuable for him to risk it. That, or I'm just not quite enough for his standard. I forget sometimes, that he's a three-hundred-year-old vampire. For all that immense lifespan, I can't imagine how many women have shared his bed. For all I know, it's probably the bond alone that is pulling him towards me, and I might have underestimated its influence a bit.

I bite my lip and pull my elbows down, glaring at him as I continue to slice the chicken on my plate. This is not going to be as easy or as quick as I thought. The fish I need to hook, I remind myself, is really the one sitting across the table looking at me, and Lucien is right, I have no idea how to catch one that big.

\--------


	16. Reflection

-REMUS-

 _I'm going to lose it one of these days,_ I think, digging into my plate pretending I don't feel shit. Three centuries I've lived, and I can't believe I'm being stirred out of my elements by a twenty-two-year-old girl. Veronica is a walking contradiction I can't seem to figure out. In the number of days I can count on one hand that I've been around her, she's shot at me twice, insulted me with her rough manners, then she flirted and seduced me with R-rated images that gave me a hard-on for days afterward.

Now she's sitting in front of me wearing an old t-shirt that looks like it's been worn since she was ten over a pair of gym shorts, seemingly oblivious to the fact that we're having a formal, candlelit dinner even if it's a made up one for the sake of practice. She's the first woman in three centuries that I've dined with who doesn't wear makeup to meet me. Her hair is always a mess, and that ponytail looks like it's been through four hours of cardio in the gym. The woman makes no effort whatsoever to impress me - or anyone, for that matter - and I'm not sure if I should feel insulted or happy that for once I'm not treated like a target or a gold mine.

But just when I think she's uninterested, she tugged on my bond and sent me an image that took everything I had to not jump out of my seat and take her on that table - repeatedly - old t-shirt and all. A few minutes later, she's sitting in front of me like a little girl who's just been refused candy, chewing furiously on her bottom lip, and I can't tell if I want to give her a pat on the back or suck her blood dry for the fifty emotions she managed to put me through in precisely thirty minutes that we've been sitting together. I should be out of this place as soon as I can before she drives me mad or makes me dig my own grave. The problem is I don't want to, and I am enjoying this a little too much. Not a healthy habit to be forming, considering the fact that she kills vampires for sport.

I watch my sommelier pour her another glass of wine, and I realize he's just opened a third bottle. The woman drinks enough to rival an alcoholic, and she doesn't seem to be halfway done. That, and I have a feeling she's been raiding my cellar for the past two days, judging from a few missing bottles from the shelves - the _vintage_ shelves, I might add.

"So," I say, trying not to smile at her reaction when she sips the wine, looking like she just had a small orgasm, "how was your day? Besides having devoured my most expensive bottles in the cellar, of course."

She laughed, and something comes alive in my stomach. I make a mental note to kill the damn thing as soon as I walk out of here. "It's not my fault you didn't lock it," Veronica says, her light, melodic voice a strange contrast to her intense personality. "Only fools would trust a poor woman with a $1,000 bottle of wine on open shelves."

One thing I like about Veronica is how confident she appears to be. Not a lot of people would admit to being poor so blatantly and without a trace of shame. Not a lot of people would admit to stealing my wine with that attitude after being caught red-handed either. From the first day she's moved in, she's been utilizing my penthouse with the same carefree excitement of a two-year-old being given a truckload of ice cream, and still has no intention whatsoever to suck up to me, or at least give me the appreciation I deserve for all the things I give her. I haven't met a woman like Veronica, and I can never tell if she would laugh or yell at me for anything I say.

"For your information," I tell her with a grin I usually use with Aelia and the rest of the highborn ladies who'd made it their life's goal to rope me, from which they'd either get insulted or try harder to get my attention, "a man with my income only locks up the $10,000 bottles, not these $1,000 ones."

I was so sure a girl like Veronica would be insulted, and then throw me a haughty response for it, but she merely narrows her eyes at my statement, as if she's onto something else beyond what my words implied. "You're trying to bait me with money."

That's a statement, not a question. She's trying to read my motives. I smile. "Is it working?"

"No." She takes a long sip from her glass and grins. "But for one of those bottles, I'll give it a consideration."

I can't help but laugh at that. The fact that she's more relaxed and playful tells me she's a little lightheaded from the drink. Maybe I am as well. "What would you give me in exchange for one?"

She leans back on the chair and crosses her legs, making sure I see the whole length of them. "Well, what do you want?"

 _What do I want?_ The first thing that comes to my mind happens to be out of the question and very much in the gutter, but besides what she's already doing for me, I can't think of anything else right now. "For one thing, you haven't answered my question."

She blinks. "You want a report of what I did today?"

"If I want a report, I'll get it from Chris." Since Lucien and Chris aren't really talking, I've been getting them from Rae and Chris directly for the past few days. I'm going to have to talk to Lucien about that soon actually. "I'm just trying to have a conversation."

"A _conversation_ ," she repeats, wrinkling her nose as like she's just swallowed something foreign in her mouth that's not supposed to be there. I wonder if she knows how childlike she looks at the moment. "Like two people on a date?"

"A date in my dictionary implies that you end up on my bed tonight, which is not going to happen even if you're dying for it," I tell her casually. The truth is, I'm actually the one dying for it, but she doesn't have to know that, does she? "This is me buying the pleasure of your company with a bottle of wine, which requires you to please me in whatever way I see fit that doesn't involve sex. How about it?"

I was certain she's going to say no when I said it, but to my surprise, Veronica looks at me with those harmless doe's eyes that don't go with her lifestyle whatsoever and appears to be considering it seriously. Too seriously, in fact, that I end up being the one feeling anxious.

She cocks her head to one side and squeezes her brows together like she's trying to figure out a math equation. Something about it makes me hold my breath. "You don't get that a lot, do you? A normal conversation?"

I find myself staring at her, unable to move and at a loss for words. When was the last time I had a normal conversation that didn't involve work or a fight against someone or something? My mother died giving birth to me, and all the conversations I'd had growing up were commands I'd given to my nursemaids and the staffs of the Westwood Estate. The only sound I get from the asshole I call father was of his fist as it slams into my face, and when my aunt stepped in to take me away to the Southwood, I was sent off to school in the countryside along with her children. Now that I've taken the Westwood from my father, I don't think there's anyone I can hold a casual conversation with, not even Lucien who remains as formal to me as the first day we'd met.

No, I haven't had that kind of conversation for a long time, not since Marcus died, and I realize it must be why I enjoy these sessions with her, why I linger way past the point of necessity. I must have been needing this without even knowing it. The acknowledgment stings a little.

Then I look at Veronica, and I see it staring right back at me. I see my reflection.

"Neither do you," I reply without thinking. The images of that day at the cemetery replays in my head and something settles in my chest, taking up a corner of space in it. Whatever it is, I'm going to have to take care of it soon, before it becomes more permanent and irreplaceable.

From across the table, I can see her taken aback by my words, and for a moment, I catch a glimpse of vulnerability in her eyes. It quickly subsides and is soon replaced by a look of mild irritation. "And how would you know that, exactly?"

"How?" I grin at the speculation I've made a while ago that has led me to that conclusion. "You're probably the only woman your age who hasn't touched her phone since I walked in here. I figured you're not into socializing much. Or am I wrong?" The fact is, Veronica doesn't even have a phone on the table or in her pockets. I detected no scent of other presence than my staff in her cabin when I walked in either. Veronica doesn't just live alone, she has no guests, no visits from friends or whatever family she has left. For a girl that young, it's considered pretty rare and perhaps also unfortunate.

She stills for a moment before shrugging at my comment. "My lifestyle doesn't exactly leave room for that kind of company," she says easily and then gestures towards me with her glass. "What's your excuse?"

 _My excuse._ I find myself with the need to swallow. _My excuse is that he died._

The answer to her question pricks me like I'm being stabbed by a hundred needles all at once. I look down at the diminishing content of my glass, and suddenly I see blood, not just anyone's blood, _his_.

"You know, a conversation is a two-sided thing," she says when I didn't answer for some time.

I look back at her once more, and something in that faint smile of hers makes me say it, "I've lost that person a long time ago."

I expect her to say she's sorry, or tell me something people find appropriate to reply to a mention of the death of someone they don't know. Veronica makes none of those responses. She simply sits still and quiet for a long time, as if trying to absorb it all in or to figure something out.

"That grave," she says thoughtfully, carefully, after a moment. "That's him?"

I don't talk about his death with anyone but Amelia. I don't even allow myself to think about it. The cost of bringing it up is too much for me to pay. That night, out here on the outdoor platform that overlooks the pool and the city's skyline, having dinner and a few drinks with Veronica, I feel strangely calm and perhaps also a little lightheaded. For a thousand reasons for me to hold back that information, I somehow choose not to heed any of it. "It is."

One word, and there I'm laying myself bare in front of her. What I'm doing is dangerous, and yet all I feel is a weight being lifted off my shoulders, off my chest. In the back of my mind, I wonder what she'll do with that information, or what she'll do with me, knowing my only weakness, but I've also discovered a big part of me that simply doesn't care.

The small smile she gives me then feels like a finger on my heart.

"Well then," she says softly, raising her glass. "I suppose that makes two of us."

A cool breeze brushes past her shoulders, sending strands of her hair flying towards me, bringing with it the scent of what I believe is her shampoo. It smells of citrus mixed with a hint of peppermint. I breathe it all in and let it settle in my lungs, into the pit of that hole I haven't been able to close as I touch the rim of my own glass to hers. It rings like a bell, a signal that marks the beginning of something new.

"I suppose it does."


	17. One Beta to Another

\- LUCIEN -

_It doesn't make sense._

I scowl at the sight before me, scrunching my nose at the smell of blood strong enough to cover the stench of excrement in that cell. There's a head on the sink, another on the floor by the bunk bed, and a third not so far from my feet. By the wall on the far right is where I find three arms that look like they've been tossed carelessly into that corner. The rest of the body, I sigh and swallow before my meal can come back up, is scattered everywhere on the floor around me. Whoever did this had made sure the pieces can't be put back together.

Three vampire prisoners have been murdered and then mutilated inside Central Prison. Two more have disappeared without a trace with the doors to their cells still locked and showing no signs of tampering. This part of the tower is heavily warded, meaning teleporting in and out isn't possible. So how did the murderers get out?

Under normal circumstances, this wouldn't be my problem, except that all five vampires happened to be the prisoners who'd been transferred here from the Westwood Prison. They were _our_ prisoners taken from the latest raid. After that meeting when Lord Remus had stormed out, the Chancellor had ordered for them to be transferred to Central Prison to give the rest of the woods access for interrogation. By the time I managed to get here to ask questions, they're all either dead or gone. Somebody is clearly trying to cover their tracks, but who?

I lower myself to the ground to check out the marks on the floor. Long, thin lines have been etched deep into the dark stones of the cell as if someone has dragged their seriously long nails across the block.

 _Not nails_. _Claws_.

I should have guessed. This is Central Prison, the only one with the power to let anyone come in and out of this cell freely is the Chancellor, who happens to be a werewolf. This is the Northwood's doing. The evidence is all there along with the motives to back it, and yet it's too clear, too well connected that I can't bring myself to draw that conclusion.

I can see why Kain might want to cover his tracks if the shipment had come from his side of the wood. It even goes with the fact that he's issued a command for a transfer. It doesn't, however, explain why he would leave claw marks as evidence without at least trying to cover it up before I've been allowed in here. This is going to hurt him for the upcoming election if words get out. It's too careless, too stupid to make sense and I can't help but shake my head at what I'm seeing.

"It makes no sense, I know."

Behind me, Zach Veyron is standing outside the cell with his back against the wall, arms crossed over his chest.

I rise to my feet and give him a customary bow, seeing that there are other people in the hallway. He may not get along with my master, but the man still outranks me, at least right now. "My Lord."

He nods in acknowledgment and, to my surprise, gives a gesture that dismissed everyone else from the area.

"You've seen the claw marks, I presume?" Veyron asks, still leaning casually on the wall, not paying much attention to his surroundings. I don't buy it for a second. I've known Zach since before he became a Keeper of the Gates before he even made beta. The man wasn't born into this like the other Keepers. He'd clawed and killed his way up from the bottom. For that much, he deserves my respect. For that much, I refuse to acknowledge any mask he wears.

"I have," I reply, keeping my expression as empty as I can make it. Zach is too good at reading people, and I can't let my guard down with him around.

He smiles lazily. "And I suppose you believe we did it?"

I smile back at him, slipping my hands in my pocket. "Didn't you?"

He pushes himself off from the wall and walks towards me, stopping a few steps away. "How is your sense of smell these days, Lucien?"

"I can smell just fine," I tell him, resisting the urge to take another sniff out of his suggestion.

"Try again then," he says, placing a hand on my shoulder, and I resist the urge to shake it off, for the reason that I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of being able to affect me. "Not with your vampire's nose this time, with the other one."

 _The werewolf one_ , he meant to say. I know what he's doing. Zach has been trying to recruit me from the moment he saw me at High Court when he was nothing but a bodyguard for Kain, and then tried harder when he became acting Keeper of the Northgate. The fact that I'm half vampire doesn't matter to him. Zach sees only the werewolf part of me, to the point that I feel it's not just my alliance that he wants, but I haven't been able to figure out what. Needless to say, it irritates Lord Remus to no ends on top of Zach's attempts to do everything to piss him off. I have a feeling I'm a big part of it. That it's because of my refusal to acknowledge the wolf part of me that gives him an aversion to Lord Remus. I don't consider myself a Werewolf. I never do and I never will, not when that part of the blood that runs in my veins belong to the scum who'd left me - who'd left _us_.

Still, I'm not an unreasonable person. My sense of smell is one of the strongest traits I've received from that part of my blood and I might as well use it to my advantage. So I do what he says. I take another sniff, and this time I smell something else. A unique, sweet, subtle scent. A flower. What kind, I can't pinpoint even though I do recognize it from somewhere.

"That flower doesn't grow in the Northwood," Zach says lazily. "Nor does it grow around here near the Sky Tower."

I know the scent. I'm certain of it, I just can't remember from what or from where. "Well, what is it?"

"I'd tell you," he drawls, "but it would mean betraying my alpha."

Of course. It's just so like Zach Veyron to drop you a riddle and never give you the answer. The man likes to lurk in the shadows, watching things unfold from afar as if the world is a show he enjoys watching from the side. The problem is that he only _appears_ to be watching from the side. When Zach Veyron strikes - and he always does - you never know from which direction it will come from. To be honest, he and Aelia Valaris deserve each other. No, I check myself at that thought, they're deadly together if they ever form a real alliance.

I brush that aside from my mind for now and concentrate on what's in front of me. "Why tell me at all?"

"Consider it a courtesy from one beta to another," he whispers over my shoulder, where his hand still rests heavily, "You're one of us, and I want you to realize it before it's too late."

"Too late for what?" There's a bad feeling in my stomach - a hunch that's been there for centuries that there's something I don't know and I should. Something that makes Veyron so persistent in his efforts to recruit me, and that he's about to act on it.

"To save that Golden Boy of yours." The grip on my shoulder tightens as if he wants the words to sink in. "Chris? Am I right?"

A cold shoots down my spine at the mention of his name. I wheel at him before I realize what I'm doing, my hands snatch a fistful of his collar and I throw him against the bars. The impact sends an echo that travels far down the hallway.

"What did you do?" The sound that comes out of my throat startles me. I sound like an animal - a feral one growling at a threat. I don't do that. I don't lose it, except when it comes to -

 _"What did you do?"_ I slam him against the bars again before I can finish that thought, my anger is roaring in my head, and I'm seeing white. From above, I feel something crumbling down, falling onto my face and shoulders, then I realize the ground underneath my feet is rumbling. The entire floor is shaking, pulling me out of my blinding rage for a moment.

Zach looks up at the power that surrounds us and then the ring on my finger that's glowing bright blue. I follow his gaze and realize that it's me, it's my power that's filling the hallway, threatening to bring down the ceiling and the walls around us. I draw a long breath and will myself to calm. The power settles and disappears, leaving me with the kind of exhaustion I've never felt in my life. _What the hell was that? Where did all that power come from?_

Before me, Zach has gone a little pale, but in his eyes I see something closer to delight than surprise. He looks like he's just been proven right about something.

"Not me," he breathes, "Kain. He wants you out of the game, and since he can't get his hands on you..." His voice trails off as if he's trying not to finish the sentence out of caution.

_He's coming after someone I care about._

I want to punch a hole in the wall at that fact, to rip something to shreds because I know how well that strategy will work. I've spent all my free life trying to be careful, to make sure I don't go back to that dungeon again, to never make mistakes. I've made sure I tie all the loose ends, that there's no weakness for anyone to use against me or against Lord Remus. But I've forgotten something. I've forgotten Chris.

"Why?" I ask, grinding my teeth to keep from being consumed by that rage again. "Why me?"

Zack looks straight at me, his yellow eyes showing none of the amusement they held earlier. "Because you're the only one Remus Valentin has left," he says. "The only one that's holding him together. He won't win the election without you."

My fingers around Veyron's collar go limp at that. Zach is right, and I must be blind to not see it coming. Lord Remus can't win the election without me. I've been managing everything to the point that he's unaware of a lot of troubles that have been going on in the Westwood Estate. But even if I wasn't, he's still struggling to hold himself together from losing Marcus Acheron. I've forced him out of addiction. I've done what I could to put back the broken pieces bit by bit over the past ten years, but I know more than anyone alive how fragile he still is. For some time now, I have a feeling that it's going to take just one more thing, one more loss, for those pieces to come crumbling down, and this time I won't be able to put them back together. This time nobody can. I _am_ the last thing that is holding him together, keeping him from breaking. Kain knows this, and now he also knows how to break me.

"He's going to stop at nothing unless you come to us, Lucien," Zach says in almost a whisper. "You're going to have to decide where your heart lies. Chris Hailey or Remus Valentin."

I might have laughed at that statement if only the wound in my chest doesn't still feel so raw. It all comes back down to the same decision - a decision I've already made or at least I thought I had. I tell myself it will be easier this time, that I've already done that once and I can do it again. I've already broken him, and I don't think there's anything left for me to break, his or mine.

"You can tell Kain," I let go of his collar and take a step away, "that he can shove that offer up his ass or I'm going to the next time he tries. I will never be one of you, and I won't turn on him."

I won't, and I've made my choice a long time ago. Remus Valentin is the only reason I'm standing here, having a life outside that dungeon, outside of that cage they'd locked me in for three centuries. He's the reason I met Chris at all, the reason I can live and feel alive again. I owe him more than my life, in ways no one will understand, not even him.

I don't have time for this, I think as I turn to walk away. There's a new priority on my list that has just been pushed forward, and I have somewhere else to be right now.

Behind me, Zach releases a heavy sigh, like he's just made up his mind to do something he's been trying not to. "Tell me one last thing, Lucien," he says before I make it out through the door, "has anyone ever told you who your father is?"

My step falters at the mention of him, even though I've always thought it can never affect me, that I don't have the capacity to care. "I don't need to know about a dog that ran away leaving its pregnant wife to die alone." I know how much my mother had loved him, how much it hurt. The bastard had left us, left me in the dungeon and for three centuries I've suffered for it. All I care about is that he's dead.

The smile he gives me sends a chilled finger trailing down my spine. This is it, I think, this is when he deals his most valuable card.

"Your father never ran away," he says, the words echo back and forth along the wall of the stone corridor like a sound from a nightmare. "He was killed. Brutally murdered, by those vampires you're trying to protect."

For a moment, my body freezes at those words and what they imply, and then I realize who he is, that I know everything that comes out of his mouth is a part of some scheme he's trying to put together. "You're lying."

"Am I?" His tone is light and laced with something venomous. "Can you really smell it? My lie? You know the scent. I know you do."

I do know the scent, and the problem is that I can't smell it. He's either telling the truth or he's too good at this. I convince myself it's the latter and I walk away, refusing to respond and give him more opportunity to lure me to his side. There're more important things for me to take care of than my past right now. Things I can still lose that I have to protect.

"Come to the Northwood Estate when you have time, Lucien." Zach's voice trails behind me as I walk out the door. "I'll tell you everything you need to know."

\--------------


	18. Save Me

-LUCIEN -

The apartment reeks with the smell of blood. There's broken glass on the floor that must have come from the shattered window. Two dining chairs have been thrown against the wall, and everywhere on the carpet are bloody footprints that look like someone has been running across the room on broken glass.

My blood turns cold as I stand there, staring at the evidence that tells me I'm too late. I should be running to find him or at least try to call for him, but I can't seem to move from the spot. There's a part of me that doesn't want to face that reality, and it's nailing my feet to the ground, stripping all my senses, paralyzing all my limbs.

A thud sounded from the bedroom, and before I know it, I'm running towards the direction. Jumping clear of the two dead bodies in the corridor and one more outside the room, I pause by the entrance and look for him. The smell of gun powder is everywhere, and it tells me whatever happened here had occurred only recently. He must have run here for the weapon that killed those werewolves. Looking down, I can see more footprints on the ground leading to the bathroom. My heart hammers violently against my ribs as I run towards it, and there I find him.

Chris is on the floor sitting with his back against the wall, his left hand clutching at an injury on his right shoulder. A shotgun is still cradled in his right hand, and there's blood all over him, everywhere, along with shards of broken glass that cling to his hair, his clothes.

He jolts up the moment he hears me enter, his fingers gripping tight on the gun as he points it at me. I raise my hands up and halt my steps to give him time to acknowledge my presence. Panic threatens to seize me again when I notice how he's gone so pale, how his eyes are glazed over like he's barely holding on to consciousness.

"Chris," I call, stepping closer slowly. "It's me."

He blinks a few times and lowers his gun when he realizes I'm not one of them. I take another step towards him and he stiffens, glaring at me in a warning. "Get out of my house," he snarls and then groans in pain as he tries to move.

I clamp down my jaw at the knifing pain in my chest. Here I am, panic-stricken and driven close to madness at the thought of losing him, and the first words that came out of his mouth is to chase me out of sight. I want to slam a fist into that pretty face and tell him he might as well shoot me with that shotgun and be done with it, but there are worse things I need to address than my own feelings. Things I have to take care of before it's too late.

"Have you been bitten?" I hear the anxiety in my question as I kneel down next to him, reaching for his injured arm.

He slaps my hand away, snarling at me as if defending himself from some rabid animal. "Don't touch me."

"Chris!" I grab him by the collar, yanking him up to face me. _"Have you been bitten?"_

He bites down on his lower lip and I immediately know the answer.

_Shit. No. Gods, no._

Closing my fists around his collar, I rip his t-shirt open, prying his hand off the wounded shoulder as I did. He struggles, and I climb on top of him, straddling him with my knees to keep him still. Chris groans as I sink my fangs into his shoulder, his fingers yanking at my hair to get me off. I suck a mouthful of his blood and spit it out on the floor and suck again. I have to get rid of the venom as much and as fast as I can, or the wound will fester, and he won't make it. Werewolf bites are lethal to vampires, and unless treated immediately, very few survive from it. I'm hoping - _praying -_ that the werewolf part of my blood will make a difference since he's sired by it. It should, seeing how I'm more immune to their bite than normal vampires.

"Enough." Chris yanks harder on my hair, and I sink my fangs in deeper. The bitter, foul-smelling venom feels thick and strong in my mouth. I have to drain his blood until I can no longer taste it in my mouth, and even then I don't know if it will be enough. In my head, I'm screaming for help, for divine intervention, for a miracle, for anything at all to save him. It has to work. It has to. I can't lose him.

" _Enough!_ " Chris yells, kicking his feet from under me. I pin him down harder with my weight and push him back against the wall. My hands are slick with sweat and Chris' blood, and it takes everything I have to hold him down. It doesn't help that I'm shaking all over, and I know he can see it. At that moment, I couldn't care less if he feels my panic from the bond.

" _Lucien_ ," he calls my name and I freeze. My heart skitters and aches at the sound of it. One simple sound and hundred emotions flood through all at once, knocking down all my walls, undoing me completely. For ten years he'd refused to acknowledge my existence, and now that he does I realize how much I've needed to hear it, how much I've missed the sound of him calling me to get my attention, to coax me into kissing him one more time, to say goodbye before I had to leave and to welcome me home again. Chris reaches for my arm, tugging on my sleeve for me to let go, and the touch of his hand on my skin, even through the fabric of my suit, makes my limbs go weak and stiff all at once.

"Please. No more," Chris pleads and sends something through the bond - something gentle and delicate, like a stroke on my hair, a warm embrace in the early morning. He's asking, begging me to stop, and I know why. I'm only part werewolf and am not completely immune to this. If I swallow too much of the contaminated blood, I'll die just the same. For all his hostility towards me, and beyond whatever mask he chooses to wear in my presence, I know what lies at the heart of it. I've known for a long time. This bond between us is too strong, to permanent for him or me to sever, no matter how much we want to.

Lifting my head up from his shoulder, I can see tears forming in his eyes as his face twists in pain. I know it's not from the wound - not from this wound at least. Chris is shaking as much as I am, and through the connection between us, I can sense his fear - _his fear for me_.

I place my hands on either side of his face, pressing my forehead on his. He sucks in a breath at the contact, and I suck in mine when I feel his emotions through the bond that matches my own. "You don't get to save me, Chris, not in this lifetime," I tell him, yanking free the tie around my neck and pull open my collar. "You're running out of blood. I need you to drink. Now."

"No," he shakes his head immediately and turns away. "The fridge. I have some."

" _Drink_ ,' I snap at him, even though I know why he doesn't want to. Feeding on my blood strengthens the bond between us, and every time he does it becomes stronger and harder to ignore. It wasn't a problem when we were still together, but now, after a decade of being apart that has reduced it to nothing more than a faint awareness in the back of our minds, drinking from me again would be like feeding him a drug he'd just gotten out of addiction from. It's going to undo everything both of us had done in the past ten years to sever that connection between us. It's going to bind him back to my existence like a silver chain around his neck.

But it has to be my blood for this to work. A part of what runs in my veins is my mother's, and it's as old and as powerful as Lord Remus' and stronger than a human's in its healing ability. The other part - the one from my werewolf father - should give him some immunity from the venom of the bite. He doesn't have time for human blood to work, and I can see how close he is to losing consciousness. If he does before he gets more blood -

" _Chris_ ," I raise my voice to the point of yelling before I could make myself finish that thought. " _That is an order!_ " It's not something I want to do, but I have to remind him what it means to defy me. "Do it. Or I swear she dies tonight." It's not a threat I'm giving. I'll slaughter the whole world if it would save him. I'll kill anyone, anything if I have to, and I don't care what that makes me.

He stares at me for a few seconds in a mixture of too many emotions than I can name, and then sinks his fangs into the right side of my neck, puncturing the carotid artery in a single bite. I close my eyes to the sensation I've come to know like the back of my hand - the feel of his fangs digging into my flesh, the way his lips pressed tight against my skin, and the rhythm of his breathing as he feeds from me. It all comes rushing back into my memory, through the contact and the bond that's being renewed and strengthened as he drinks my blood. Every kiss, every touch, every single laugh and smile he's spent on me seep back into my bones, into every ounce of my existence. It's the last straw that was holding me back from him, the breaking of the last string that has been keeping me from diving back into it, and I think, I think I'm not going to survive to lose this. Not this time.

Somewhere in my mind, Zach's words resurface like a rotten corpse emerging from the depths of the sea where I'd buried it out of sight.

_'You're going to have to decide where your heart lies. Chris Hailey or Remus Valentin.'_

***

A/N: When I started out, I didn't expect to love writing Lucien this much. It's such a pleasant surprise that I like it so much want to jump into his own book right now. Me and my weakness for side characters is incurable!! *cries* I hope you guys like this pairing too. It's Chris' POV coming right up. 😊


End file.
